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THE UNVEILED EAST 



THE UNVEILED EAST 



F. A. McKENZIE 

AUTHOR OF "FROM TOKYO TO TIFLIS " 



WITH 29 ILLUSTRATIONS 
AND 3 MAPS 



NEW YORK 

E. P. DUTTON AND COMPANY 

31 WEST TWENTY-THIRD STREET 
1907 



PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN 



S a-- 



CONTENTS 



/ V 



I. THE PURPOSE OF NEW JAPAN 

II. THE FIGHT FOR THE PACIFIC 

III. HOW JAPAN CAME TO KOREA 

IV. THE PASSING OF EMPIRE 

V. THE DREAM OF THE MARQUIS ITO 

VI. MANCHURIA AFTER THE WAR 



VII. JAPANESE IMMIGRANTS AND CHINESE ROB- 
BERS 



VIII. FROM PORT ARTHUR TO HARBIN 

IX. JAPAN'S COMMERCIAL CAMPAIGN . 

X. MONOPOLY AT WORK . 

XL THE JAPANESE COTTON TRADE . 

XII. THE OPEN DOOR .... 

XIII. THE PROBLEM OF THE EMIGRANT 



PAGE 
I 

17 
31 

43 
59 

75 

9i 

99 

119 

131 
141 

151 
163 



vi CONTENTS 

CHAP. 

XIV. NEW CHINA . 

XV. VICEROY YUAN — REFORMER 

XVI. THE NEW CHINESE ARMY 

XVII. THE OLD ORDER PASSETH 

XVIII. THE NEW WOMAN . 

XIX. A FIGHT FOR NATIONAL EXISTENCE 

XX. CHINA AND FOREIGN TRADE 

XXI. THE GREAT MISSIONARY QUESTION 

XXII. JAPAN AND CHRISTIANITY . 

XXIII. ENGLAND'S OPPORTUNITY 



PAGE 
179 

193 

209 

233 
243 
257 
271 
285 
305 
315 



APPENDIX 
THE KOREAN CASE AGAINST JAPAN 

I. MEMORIAL FROM THE KOREAN FOREIGN OFFICE 

TO PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT . . . .325 

II. THE OPEN LETTER OF CHOI IK HYON 



INDEX 



332 

343 



ILLUSTRATIONS 



Viceroy Yuan Shih-kai reviewing his Troops at Paotingfu, 

North China Frontispiece 

FACING PAGE 

Japanese Shipbuilding. H.I.M.'s Torpedo Boat Destroyer, 

Asakaze, built and engined at the Kawasaki Dockyards, 

Kobe 19 

(On its official trial trip, December 22, 1905, it travelled 
over the measured mile at a speed of 29*67 knots.) 
Entrance to the Old Palace of the Korean Emperor, Seoul . 36 

Fusan, Korea 36 

Torture in Korea during the Japanese Administration. A Scene 

in a Prison Cell, Sun-chon, July, 1906 66 

Torture in Korea during the Japanese Administration. Prisoner 

in Courtyard, Sun-chon, July, 1906 72 

The Antung-Moukden Railway 78 

„ 78 

View on the Antung-Moukden Railway, showing Japanese 

Military Blockhouse 84 

Chinese Prisoner and Japanese Jailor, Changfu, Manchuria, 

September, 1906 95 

The Author's Cossack Guard when travelling through Russian 

Manchuria 116 

The Distribution of Japanese Cotton Goods along the Railway 

in Manchuria 150 

A Slum in Tokyo 166 

The Summit of 203 Metre Hill, showing Crosses erected over 

Graves of Fallen Russian Soldiers 166 

Viceroy Yuan Shih-kai and his Staff 196 

How Loafers are taught Industry in China. A Corner of 

Viceroy Yuan's Model Prison, Tientsin .... 202 



viii ILLUSTRATIONS 

FACING PAGE 

A Room in Viceroy Yuan's Industrial School, Tientsin . . 206 
Chinese Artillery. Army of Chih-li, Paotingfu . . . .211 

,, Cavalry ,, „ ,, .... 217 

Group of Staff Officers at Paotingfu, China .... 224 

Chinese Artillery. Army of Chih-li, Paotingfu .... 226 

Chinese Military Athletics. Army of Chih-li, Paotingfu . . 230 
Corner of Exterior Wall, British Legation, Peking, where the 

Brunt of the Boxer Attack was met in 1900 .... 236 

Marconi Mast inside the Italian Legation Grounds, Peking . 242 

Gate of a Foreign Legation at Peking, 1906 .... 242 
Blackboard in a Chinese School at Tientsin, showing how 

Chinese Teachers instruct Native Pupils in English . 260 

Barrack-room for Military Cadets at Paotingfu, China . . 260 

Chinese Railway Station, Peking-Hankow Railway . . 274 

Shinto Priests, officially attached to the Japanese Army . . 308 



MAPS 

The Japanese Empire, 1894 4 

I9°7 5 

A Railway Map of China 245 



CHAPTER 1 

THE PURPOSE OF NEW JAPAN 



CHAPTER I 

THE PURPOSE OF NE W JAPAN 

SINCE the conclusion of the Treaty of Portsmouth 
in August, 1905, the world has seen a gradual 
unveiling of the policy of New Japan. By the 
extension and maintenance of territorial supremacy 
outside her own borders, by securing exclusive trading 
privileges, by a wholesale system of monopolies, sub- 
sidies, bounties, and concessions, and by the skilful 
use of her limited tariff autonomy, Japan has entered 
fully upon a campaign of aggressive imperialism. She 
is acquiring, by conquest and by construction, the 
ownership of a vast system of railways on the main- 
land of Asia ; her mercantile marine, working under 
Government direction and largely with Government 
funds, has for a year waged open and merciless war 
upon British and German shipping lines for the Pacific 
coasting trade. Entering Korea under the guise of 
friendship and alliance, her representatives have 
absorbed the Government, made the Emperor virtually 
a prisoner, forced the British chief of the Customs 
Service from office, acquired many concessions, and 
seized the lands and homes of the common people 
in towns and country. In Manchuria a policy of 
colonisation and national assertion has been adopted 
which, if not checked, will inevitably bring that 
province under the rule of Tokyo. The Japanese 




The JAPANESE EMPIRE in 1907 



<Jq/ianese tern fort/ shaded Vius 

Dependency • • 

Sphere of Influence • 



6 THE UNVEILED EAST 

ownership of Manchurian railways has been employed 
to favour the Japanese port of Tairen (formerly known 
as Dalny) at the expense of the mainly British settle- 
ment of Newchwang. For many months Japanese 
merchants were allowed to bring goods into that 
province on terms denied to other shippers, and 
foreign traders were refused privileges allowed to 
Japanese. 

Four years ago England and America were obsessed 
by the vision of a great Russia, all-powerful and all- 
knowing, moving forward in the Far East almost 
with the resistlessness of fate. Men marked what was 
thought to be her campaign of silent, exclusive, and 
apparently unceasing self-aggrandisement. The growth 
of Russian supremacy was witnessed with dread, for 
it was common belief that where Russian power spread 
the prestige and commerce of other nations declined. 
To-day the vision of a Russian Colossus, shadowing 
the earth from the German Ocean to the gates of 
India, over-lord of Persia, supreme in the councils of 
Peking, master of Korea and owner of Manchuria, 
has passed. We know the weakness of the Russian 
giant. But that which men yesterday believed Russia 
to be in the Far East, Japan now is. Proclaiming 
with all possible publicity her adherence to the 
doctrine of the " open door," she has adopted a 
policy of national preference and exclusive privilege ; 
nominally standing for the integrity of China, she is 
maturing plans that can have no purpose if they do 
not involve the passing of large parts of Chinese 
territory into Japanese hands. She does not threaten 
India from the north by the advance of armies, but 
her teachers are stirring up unrest among some of 



THE PURPOSE OF NEW JAPAN 7 

the Indian peoples, and her official agents have for nearly 
two years been at work on a great trade campaign there 
directly aimed at Lancashire's most profitable market. 

England and Japan are in alliance. But it would 
be foolish to ignore the fact that the imperial 
and commercial policy of Japan must inevitably, if 
maintained, strain this alliance to breaking-point 
within a generation. The wholesale emigration of 
Japanese coolies will create problems involving a 
choice for England between the cordial friendship of 
our colonies and partnership with Japan ; we will have 
to decide in China between offending our ally or 
maintaining our treaty rights and commercial oppor- 
tunities unimpaired ; and in Korea we are already 
faced by the alternative of protest or the limitation 
of a great future market. 

Twelve years ago, at the close of the Chino-Japanese 
War, men saw what the rise of the Island Empire 
meant. " Why do we find Japan regarding with such 
nonchalant confidence the prospect of a * brush ' with 
Russia ? " asked a leading daily in the Far East, The 
North China Daily News, in 1895. " And why is it 
quite possible that a Japan-Russo campaign might 
not effect the entire annihilation of Japan ? It is 
not due to a bumptious conceit alone that we find 
Japan calm in the face of a threatened Russian attack, 
and talking at the same time of such a tremendous 
undertaking as the abolition of British prestige in 
the East and the restoration of Indian to the natives. 
Conceit there is, but it is backed by a knowledge of 
her resources, and the power which a resort to prac- 
tices to which European nations do not stoop gives 
her. Japan, having shown her powers of calculation, 



8 THE UNVEILED EAST 

her astuteness and capacity during the recent war, 
should, we maintain, be henceforth treated with 
as much caution as courtesy ; not as an infant in 
military tactics and diplomacy, but as a past-master in 
the arts of both." Then came the cloud of Russian 
expansion, which temporarily blotted out our clear view 
of the purpose of the Mikado's advisers. Japan used 
this time of grace to prepare herself for further ad- 
vance. How successfully she made ready all the 
world has since seen. 

The policy of imperial expansion has been forced 
upon the Island Empire by two causes — national pride 
and economic necessity. When Japan abandoned her 
old plan of exclusion, she found herself treated by the 
great Powers as the child-nation of the world. Her 
people were petted and patronised. They were so 
different from us, physically and morally, that white 
men regarded them as amiable, charming, inferior 
beings. In moments of anger the hooligans among 
our Anglo-Saxon publicists sneered at them as " yellow 
monkeys." Even to-day one finds sections of the 
press of San Francisco and Sydney reeking with such 
abuse. It is stored up in the long memory of a 
people who never forget. 

Here was a nation, proud and supersensitive, 
placed in a position that wounded it to the quick. The 
combined blood of Mongol and Malay flowing in 
Japanese veins gave at once the temper to brood 
over, the passion to resent, and the racial power to 
rise above European estimates. The islanders knew 
that if they were small physically, and featured in a 
manner unpleasing to our aesthetic sense, yet their 
splendidly developed frames could stand cold and 



THE PURPOSE OF NEW JAPAN 9 

heat and severe toil at least as well as ours. They 
knew that they had statesmen and warriors trained 
by generations of faithful conduct to sacrifice all for 
fatherland, and they were confident that the spirit of 
their people was charged with a patriotism at least 
as lofty, an ambition at least as soaring, and a power 
of endurance at least equal to that of the West. 

They were great enough to conceal their resentment. 
They endured our patronage and smiled at it. They 
absorbed our naval skill and added their own nerve- 
less fatalism ; their samurai adopted the militarism 
of Germany and attached to it a revived Bushido ; 
they studied in our factories, shipyards and workshops, 
and taught their fellows what they learnt. They even 
modified the diet of the youths of their better classes 
in order to alter their physical appearance. Accus- 
tomed to a simple life, indifferent to the costly 
comforts of Western civilisation, fearless and strong- 
nerved, they attained their end. 

No man, unblinded by prejudice, can study the 
record of this amazing national advance without 
admiration and respect. It won for the Japanese a 
high place among the nations of the world, and 
rightly. In the course of this volume I shall have 
some things to detail which may not be wholly agreeable 
to Japanese readers, but I would be sorry indeed to 
have any misunderstanding on one point. I believe, 
reluctantly and against my own personal inclinations, 
that the methods of expansion adopted by Japan must, 
if not modified, bring disturbance to world peace. 
But I have witnessed in more than one fierce battle 
on land and sea the heroism and self-sacrifice of this 
people, and I cannot but respect their manhood, I 



io THE UNVEILED EAST 

have seen the patient endurance of their women, 
hungering and worse than hungering at home, while 
fathers and brothers fought for the Mikado across 
the sea. I have shared camp and shared bread with 
their soldiers, Some of them I reckon among my 
friends. The West, half-informed, first patronised and 
then heaped hysterical adulation upon the Japanese. 
In time it will learn to treat them neither as children 
nor as semi-angels, but as a great, ambitious, and 
strong-purposed nation. 

The second compelling cause for the expansion of 
Japan has been economic necessity. Japan is poor. 
Large parts of her territory are mountain or rock, 
and less than sixteen per cent, is arable land. Wages 
are very low. The simple lives of the people, the 
paucity of their wants, and the manner in which they 
can produce pleasing effects at trivial cost have up 
to now largely saved them from mental debasement, 
such as extreme poverty so often brings in Europe. 
But each year the problem of population becomes 
more acute. In 1 88 1 the people of Japan numbered 
thirty-six millions; in 1906, they numbered forty- 
eight millions, an increase of thirty-three per cent, in 
twenty-five years. Japan to-day contains an average 
of no less than 328 people to the square mile. The 
yearly increase of population has reached as high as 
1*54 per cent. The birth-rate is steadily rising. In 
1872 it was 17 ; in 1882, 2-49 ; in 1892, 2*94 ; and 
in 1899, 3-10 per hundred. Our own birth-rate, 
like that of most white races, is steadily falling. It 
was 2*92 in 1890, and 2*69 in 1905. In our land 
females greatly outnumber males ; in Japan the male 
children outnumber the female. 



THE PURPOSE OF NEW JAPAN n 

Employment has to be found for the extra twelve 
millions. The growing factory system is absorbing 
some. The policy of emigration and imperial ex- 
pansion is beginning to provide for others. 

Visitors to Yokohama are often attracted by the 
spectacle on the English hatoba of armies of strong- 
limbed, active coolies accompanied by their women- 
folk and children, and carrying bundles of clothing 
and bedding. These are the emigrants going out 
in hundreds and thousands to other lands. The only 
sight known to me resembling this exodus is the 
departing streams of Italians at Naples in spring-time 
on their way to America. Twenty years ago the 
total of Japanese emigrants did not reach 20,000 ; 
in 1900 it had risen to 124,000; to-day there 
are about 400,000 living in other lands. At least 
90,000 Japanese are in Korea, excluding the military ; 
there are about 65,000 in Hawaii, and 70,000 in 
Western America. 

Japan is rapidly proving herself a supreme colonising 
nation. In three years she had appropriated, with 
scarce a struggle from the natives, one of the finest 
and potentially most rich of the minor countries of 
Asia. Her people are covering Southern Manchuria 
and are scattering over large parts of China. In 
Korea and Manchuria they have so disciplined a 
large population that few men dare to raise a hand 
against them. Their police are everywhere in their 
chosen districts, and their troops can quickly reach 
all places. They are rapidly developing the natural 
resources, working coal seams hitherto untouched, 
exploiting idle gold fields and tapping iron beds that 
up to now were lying waste, The great primeval 



12 THE UNVEILED EAST 

forests on the Chinese and Siberian borders of Korea 
are ringing with their axes, and the sunny fields of 
the South are growing their cotton. 

The very coolie goes out with the air of a 
conqueror. In Japan itself, the courtesy and restraint 
of all classes veil and conceal racial antipathy until 
it is often swept away altogether. Even since the 
war there has been surprisingly little display of 
arrogance there. But one finds a very different state 
of affairs among the Japanese who go abroad. In 
Korea, Manchuria, and China especially, a large pro- 
portion of them are blustering, grasping, and arrogant. 
" We have beaten the greatest military nation on 
earth," they say. "The mightiest European power 
has had to ask our aid to prevent its Asiatic possessions 
passing from it. Therefore we are the greatest people 
in the world." To the average Japanese emigrant 
there are only two classes of humanity — Japanese 
and others. If you are not Japanese you belong to 
an inferior race, and there's an end on't. 

They very rarely intermarry with other races, 
and it is almost unknown for them to become the 
permanent citizens of another country. They desire 
to be the leaders of New Asia, but at the same 
time they claim to be looked upon and treated as 
different from all other Asiatic peoples. The surface- 
points of resemblance between them and the Chinese, 
and the facility afforded for inter-communication by 
similar ideographs, only show in deeper relief the 
profound differences between these two peoples in 
character, temperament, and mode of thought. When 
it was suggested to Baron Kaneko, the official press 
agent for the Japanese Government in America during 



THE PURPOSE OF NEW JAPAN 13 

the war, that his country might encourage inter- 
marriage between Japanese and Koreans in Korea, 
his reply was emphatic : " Not at all ! On the 
contrary we shall oppose it very vigorously. We 
shall consider the Koreans as a lower race ; we will 
give them all possible liberty, but we shall in every 
way endeavour to maintain the Japanese spirit among 
the colonists that go among them. We believe in 
the superiority of the races, and not in the amalgama- 
tion;' 

One of the most disquieting factors to-day is the 
enormous expansion taking place in Japanese armaments. 
To judge from the military preparations in hand, 
one might conclude that Japan is anticipating another 
early war. 

The Japanese authorities are reticent about their 
military position, but enough is known to show that 
the new military and naval schemes now in course of 
completion will within a few years double the army, 
and at least double the fighting power of the navy. 
At the beginning of the Russian War the Japanese 
army consisted of thirteen divisions, a railway corps 
in Tokyo, garrison artillery and local garrisons in 
Tsushima and Formosa. The War Office strove, at 
the close of 1906, to have the permanent military 
establishment increased to twenty-one divisions, but 
this was declared an impossible burden by the Depart- 
ment of Finance. As a compromise, there are now 
to be seventeen divisions in Japan, two divisions in 
Korea and Manchuria, and various railway and special 
corps. Each division is being increased by a thousand 
men. The time of infantry training has been shortened 
from three years to two, thus automatically augmenting 



1 4 THE UNVEILED EAST 

the strength of the infantry reserves by 50 per cent. 
The coast forts have been re-armed, and the field 
artillery is being re-equipped and greatly increased. 
Strenuous efforts are being made to improve the 
cavalry, and the various changes of material and equip- 
ment are such, that while the numerical strength will 
be doubled, the fighting capacity of the army will be 
increased threefold. Still greater schemes are on foot, 
and there is little reason to doubt that within a few 
years Japan will be able to put a million men on her 
front fighting line, with from a million and a half to 
two millions of reserves behind. 

The naval growth is equally striking. In 1903 
the Japanese fleet consisted of six first-class battle- 
ships, not including two nominally on the lists but 
of no value. She lost three battleships in the war, 
and captured six first-class Russian battleships and 
three first-class Russian armoured cruisers. It is not 
yet certain if one of the Japanese battleships supposed 
to have been wrecked, the Mikasa, can or cannot be 
restored. Last year Japan launched the Satsuma, the 
greatest battleship in the world, greater even than the 
Dreadnought. A second battleship of even greater 
power, the Aki, is now nearing completion, and it is 
proposed to order a third one from England. The 
navy is being re-equipped with heavier guns. When 
her present scheme of naval increase is completed, 
Japan will have fourteen or fifteen first-class battle- 
ships, an equal number of first-class cruisers, and nearly 
one hundred and fifty destroyers and torpedo craft. 
Great efforts are being made to construct a special 
submarine in the Japanese dockyards, largely on the 
lines of the Holland submarines. It is impossible to 



THE PURPOSE OF NEW JAPAN 15 

give details of this new boat, but there is every reason 
to believe that the Japanese are meeting with reason- 
able success in their experiments. 

While Japan is increasing her forces on the Pacific 
at this amazing rate, England is reducing hers to a 
negligible minimum. In 1903 we had a respectable 
Pacific fleet of five battleships and seven cruisers. 
To-day our battleships have gone, and our attenuated 
fleet of cruisers still left could be little more than a 
hostage to a capable foe. 

The comparative figures in the Japanese budgets 
for 1 906 or 1 907 tell the story of growing militarism 
in the most striking fashion. 



Army. 

Ordinary Expenditure 
Extraordinary Expenditure 


1906 

Yen 

50,460,384 

1,676,742 


1907 

Yen 

53,663,788 

57,953,380 


Ordinary Expenditure 
Extraordinary Expenditure 


28,914,073 
10,615,854 


33,414,695 
49,067,524 


(1 yen = 2s, 


) 





Against whom is this great expenditure incurred ? 
It is unnecessary for purposes of national defence, 
for Japan is so favoured by her natural surroundings 
that the invasion of her soil by foreign powers would 
be a work of the greatest difficulty. It is not required 
to maintain the position Japan has already won in 
Korea and in Manchuria. What, then, is its purpose ? 
This is a question that those who accept at face 
value the declaration of world peace and national 
disinterestedness made by Japanese ministers and 
diplomats would do well to ask themselves. 

Twelve years ago a foremost English thinker, 



1 6 THE UNVEILED EAST 

Mr. Frederick Greenwood, wrote words that may be 
recalled now. " Sir Henry Maine," he said, " was not 
solely or even chiefly occupied with empirical politics ; 
and looking above the expediences, even the higher 
expediences of statecraft, he held that any European 
power which allied itself in arms with the yellow races 
against another European nation would play traitor 
to the welfare of the whole human race. And why 
it would be a most treacherous, foolish, and wicked 
part to play becomes clear in a minute to anyone who 
thinks for so long of what our world and its civilisation 
would suffer at the hands of hordes of Chinese, Japanese, 
Malays, equipped as were the captors of Port Arthur." 



CHAPTER II 

THE FIGHT FOR THE PACIFIC 



17 



CHAPTER II 

THE FIGHT FOR THE PACIFIC 

JAPAN aims to be the leader of a revived Asia. 
She is advancing to-day along three lines — terri- 
torial expansion, increased fighting power, and an 
aggressive commercial campaign. Two main objects 
in the commercial campaign are the acquisition of a 
great shipbuilding industry and the exclusive control 
of the coasting trade of the Western Pacific. 

The growth of Japanese shipbuilding has been 
amazing. When the ancient junk had to make way 
for vessels of modern type, Japan at first found it 
necessary to import nearly all its ships. The skill 
of Japanese carpenters soon mastered the construction 
of wooden vessels, and Japan has for some time built 
all the sailing ships she wants. Progress in the con- 
struction of iron and steel steamers was more slow. 
To help it on, the Government offered a bounty 
varying from £i 45. to £1 per ton of the body of 
the ship, for suitable iron or steel steamers of 700 tons 
upwards in size, with an additional bounty of ten 
shillings per horse power of the engine. 

There are to-day three leading shipyards in Japan, 
the Mitsubishi at Nagasaki, the Kawasaki at Kobe, 
and the Osaka ironworks. These three yards employ 
altogether about 25,000 men, and are well equipped 
with modern machinery. They have been for some 
time quite unable to meet the orders pouring into 
19 



20 THE UNVEILED EAST 

them, and they are enlarging their accommodation as 
quickly as they can. The largest dock belongs to the 
Mitsubishi and measures 728 ft. The heads of these 
establishments and many of their principal assistants 
have been trained in British and American yards. It 
has sometimes been said that all that is done is to 
piece together material already made abroad, in order 
to earn the Japanese subsidy. However true this may 
have been a few years ago, it is certainly not so now. 
The construction work, to the smallest details, is done 
in the yards themselves. Japanese mechanics have not 
yet acquired great facility in handling machinery, and 
the foreign visitor cannot but be struck by the very 
large number of men necessary in the yards, probably 
quite three times as many as would be employed in 
England for similar work. 

Less than ten years ago it was thought almost 
incredible when the Hitachi-maru^ a ship of 6,000 tons, 
was built in Japan. Last year the Satsuma, 19,200 
tons, the largest battleship in the world, was successfully 
floated at Nagasaki. Merchant vessels of 13,000 tons 
are now on the stocks, submarines are being completed, 
and the Japanese shipbuilders are proving themselves 
especially successful with torpedo-boat destroyers. In 
spite of the fact that they are hampered by the lack 
of cheap iron and steel, they are already competing 
with English yards for foreign orders. Last June I 
myself saw five boats on the keel in the Kawasaki yards 
for the Chinese Government ; Siam is giving orders 
to Japan, and merchant vessels are being made even 
for India. Government assistance to the leading ship- 
yards has extended far beyond the mere payment of 
official subsidies. There are a hundred ways in which 



THE FIGHT FOR THE PACIFIC 21 

the Japanese authorities can quietly and unostentatiously 
help the great shipping companies, and they do so, 
for they realise that ship-building is an essential part 
of national defence. 

For some years it was clear that the Japanese 
would be dangerous competitors with Europe in 
shipping. Even before the war, Japanese liners were 
running to London on the one side and to Sydney, 
Australia, on the other. It is an open secret that the 
endeavour to run great mail lines manned by white 
sailors on the Pacific has not been very profitable for 
America. Line after line has lost money by the 
experiment. Mr. J. J. Hill, one of the leading 
American railway presidents, built the largest cargo 
ships on earth to go from Seattle to China and Japan. 
He planned a great scheme in conjunction with 
Mr. Pierpont Morgan and others by which a group of 
American railways, brought together under the control 
of the Northern Securities Company, should feed his 
Seattle boats with American manufactures, to be poured 
into the East. The Northern Securities Company was 
dissolved by the action of the American Government, 
and the Hill steamers from Seattle have been white 
elephants. Seven American companies have, in past 
years, attempted to maintain regular lines between 
San Francisco and Australia. Six of these have 
failed, and a year ago the seventh threatened to 
stop its business if the American Government did 
not come to its assistance. The Pacific Mail Line 
under the control of Mr. Harriman, the American 
railway king, operates a magnificent service of boats 
between San Francisco and Japan. Soon after the close 
of the Russian War, Mr. Harriman opened negotiations 



22 THE UNVEILED EAST 

with the Toyo-Kisen-Kasha for the purchase of his 
vessels. The negotiations were broken off from the 
American side, although the Japanese were willing 
to conclude them. 

The white man is undoubtedly severely handicapped 
in the Pacific trade. It costs an American ship over 
two shillings a day to feed and maintain its crew ; 
it costs a Japanese less than sixpence. The Japanese 
captain demands only a fraction of the minimum rate 
for a European captain, and the same difference is 
observable in all expenses. The great English lines 
in China which have a large Pacific coasting trade, 
work with Chinese crews and English officers. Here 
the Japanese possess an advantage over us, because of 
the considerable subsidies paid by their Government. 

These subsidies take two forms. There is a regular 
allowance for steamers of not less than a thousand tons 
in displacement engaged in open sea service, and 
capable of making at least ten knots an hour. This 
bounty is a shilling per ten knots covered per ton 
for a steamer of one thousand tons, with an increase of 
ten per cent, for every additional five hundred tons and 
twenty per cent, for every addition of one knot per 
hour to the speed. If the steamer is foreign built 
and has been registered later than October i, 1899, 
only half the rate is granted. Besides this, the 
Government makes an extra and often considerable 
allowance for special services. The subsidy thus 
granted amounts to ,£600,000 a year, and it is mainly 
divided between the two great lines, the Nippon Yusen 
Kaisha and Osaka Shosen Kaisha. All the great 
shipping companies are practically departments of the 
Government service. One reads in official publications 



THE FIGHT FOR THE PACIFIC 23 

that the Government has " ordered " such-and-such 
a company to start a line to a certain place or to 
increase its tonnage somewhere else. This is not a 
mere figure of speech. Leading lines have their shares 
largely held by the inner ring of high officials. 

When the Government wishes to help in promoting 
trade in a certain direction it goes about the matter 
very systematically. This may be illustrated by the 
case of India. The Japanese Government determined 
to attack the Indian cotton market. It first despatched 
agents who carefully examined the field and sent back 
a large number of samples of the kind of goods 
required by the Hindoo peoples. These samples were 
distributed among the various museums and manu- 
facturing houses in Japan, and the producers were 
urged to make goods like them. Specially subsidised 
lines to India were opened and maintained. This 
was legitimate enough. But it was accompanied by 
other things which English people may be excused 
for thinking unusual. Various Japanese publicists 
visited India. Some were lecturing upon the accom- 
plishments of New Japan ; others met Indian leaders 
in conference and asked them why other Asiatic 
peoples could not emulate Japan's example ; others 
went through the country simply as Buddhists sud- 
denly taken with a desire to make a pilgrimage to 
men of their own faith ; and still others as Christians 
examining religious developments there. 

The speeches of some of these Japanese visitors 
were frankly anti-British. They urged on the Hindoos, 
publicly and privately, to recreate their nationality 
and to obtain their independence. Thus Mr. Harada 
Tasuku, a well-known religious leader, wrote to a 



24 THE UNVEILED EAST 

number of educated Indians with whom he had come 
in contact during his Indian visit. " We cannot but 
deeply sympathise with you in the trying political 
situation in which you are now placed," he said. " It 
is my constant hope that the day will come when 
India will occupy a prominent place in the Eastern 
world as an independent and self-governing country." 1 
As a writer in The Japanese Weekly Mail who quoted 
these words remarked : " Were an English missionary 
or Christian layman to go to Formosa or Korea and 
say publicly that he prayed for the day when the 
natives would no longer be subject to Japanese rule, 
we venture to think the said gentleman would bring 
down a hornets' nest about his ears." 

An unusual iferment was noticed among the forty 
Indian students at Tokyo. The Indo-Japanese Asso- 
ciation held a meeting in Tokyo at which Count 
Okuma, the well-known Japanese statesman, told the 
Indians present that Japan had a peculiar regard for 
India, and spoke of the position of independence to 
which India was legitimately aspiring. " Japan and 
England must look to the welfare of India," he said. 
" India and Japan must work hand in hand for the 
betterment of the people in this part of the world. 
If we work together, the commercial relations of the 
countries will be developed to a greater degree." The 
Japanese press began to interest itself in the Swadeshi 
movement in India, a well-known anti-British agitation. 
One Hindoo wrote to the semi-official Japan Times 
declaring that his people were slaves. " At present," 

1 " Kore ni kuwauru ni tanen gensen taru shuno nakarishi ga tame 
ni, konai ni oite mo, shiso gassezu, ishi no kwantsu sezaru mono 
sukunashi to sezu " (Kirisutokyo Sekai, October, 1906). 



THE FIGHT FOR THE PACIFIC 25 

he said, " India awaits the help of an Oriental nation 
which has already been a success in civilisation and 
by its virtue has taught a good lesson to the countries 
of the West." The fact that this agitation and unrest 
arose while Japan was completing her commercial 
campaign may or may not have been a coincidence. 
Agitation, subsidised shipping, ferment, and the rest 
all worked together to promote trade and increase 
the distribution of Japanese manufactured goods. 

Early last year the Japanese shipping companies 
showed that they intended to go a step further than 
before. They started to extend their lines and to 
enter into acute fighting competition with British and 
German companies on the Pacific. Their mercantile 
marine had increased from 720,000 tons before the 
war, to 1,200,000 tons, and further business had to 
be found for it. One of the heads of the leading 
Japanese shipping company, the N.Y.K., boldly 
announced in a rash moment that it was necessary 
to check the arrogance of foreign steamship com- 
panies east of Suez. A fight was begun with 
two well-known firms of China merchants, Messrs, 
Butterfield & Swire, and Messrs. Jardine, Matheson 
& Co. The Japanese claimed a coasting monopoly, 
particularly on the Yokohama-Shanghai line. From 
Shanghai the fight extended to Bangkok and has 
been going on vigorously ever since. 

About the same time another fight arose in the 
Yangtsze valley. The Yangtsze was long considered 
the special British field of trade in China. Ten years 
ago three of the four companies which plied on the 
river were British, and the fourth was the China 
merchants. The N.Y.K. purchased one of the British 



26 THE UNVEILED EAST 

lines, the McBain, in 1902, and a second Japanese 
company, the Osaka Shosen Kaisha, also entered the 
field. The great port on the Yangtsze is Han-kow, 
the coming commercial capital of China. Messrs. 
McBain had a very good site on the British concession, 
and the N.Y.K. imagined that it would be permitted 
to use this site. Other British firms objected, claiming 
that no vessels but those flying the British flag were 
allowed to moor in the British section. The British 
Government supported the prohibition. The Japanese 
felt very much incensed over the matter, and claimed 
that they had been badly treated. " As England is 
our ally," said Mr. R. Kondo, the president of the line, 
at the annual meeting last November, " and as the two 
countries are pledged to render each other political 
assistance, I imagined that even in matters of trade we 
should not have experienced such unsympathetic treat- 
ment. But that was a mistake on my part. I find 
that in national commerce there is no distinction be- 
tween ally and national enemy, and that when any 
outsider attempts to invade one's sphere of influence 
it is customary to exert all one's strength for his ex- 
clusion. Hence that England, who has included the 
richest part of Central China in her sphere of commercial 
influence, should vehemently oppose our entry there, 
is not to be wondered at. On this account, however, 
we must be prepared to encounter more or less difficulty 
in the future also, and we must only hope to achieve 
the Company's aims in spite of it." 

For the past year competition of the most severe 
kind has been waged between the European and 
Japanese lines on the Yangtsze. Messrs. Butterfield 
& Swire have five vessels running between Shanghai 



THE FIGHT FOR THE PACIFIC 27 

and Han-kow, Messrs. Jardine, Matheson and Co. 
have the same number, and there are three German 
and three other British vessels there. The Japanese 
have six steamers plying between Shanghai and Han- 
kow, three between Tokyo and Han-kow, and three 
between Osaka and Han-kow. In addition to these 
there are various other vessels, British, foreign and 
Chinese, including the very fine service of the China 
Merchants Company. The Japanese are using every 
possible political means to add to their influence and 
to secure cargoes. If they succeed in driving the 
British ships off the Yangtsze, a severe blow will 
be inflicted upon British prestige. The firms that are 
upholding the British flag there are strong, and are 
more than able to stand their own against any ordinary 
competition. But even the greatest group of merchant 
princes may well pause when it finds itself in a fight 
against a Government. This is undoubtedly the case 
here. The supreme force directing the Yangtsze fight is 
no shipping company, but the Japanese Government itself. 
This has been shown by a Bill brought into the 
House of Representatives in the spring of 1907. 
This Bill proposes a fresh series of subsidies and 
grants for the Japanese shipping companies with lines 
to Shanghai, North China, and the Yangtsze. Annual 
subsidies are to be extended from October next to 
March, 1912. Three vessels are to be put on the 
Shanghai line each over 2,500 tons gross, with a 
maximum speed of more than fourteen knots an 
hour. Three more are also to be provided. Various 
minute conditions are made about the North China, 
Hokaido, and other lines. The Shipping Subsidies' Bill 
for the Yangtsze steamers provides for the establish- 



28 THE UNVEILED EAST 

ment of regular services on various routes. It 
gives the Government power to fix the number of 
voyages, ports of call and time schedules, and the 
Government must approve of the passenger rates and 
freightage. The whole measure ensures the mainten- 
ance and the financing of the Japanese Yangtsze Services. 
It is the Japanese Government's reply to those British 
companies which have been bold enough to attempt to 
hold their own in this former sphere of British influence. 
There is no question but that the Japanese lines 
are now very largely acquiring trade that was 
formerly British. An American Consul, Mr. George 
Anderson of Amoy, writing on this matter last year, 
before the recent spell of activity, gave some valuable 
information about affairs on the lower Chinese coast. 
After calling attention to the great increase that has 
taken place in Japanese tonnage, he continued, " How 
this great Japanese tonnage has affected British shipping 
interests is easily shown by the returns of the shipping 
in Chinese and Japanese ports for the past few years. 
The relative decrease in British tonnage from year to 
year, and the rise of Japanese tonnage, is in marked 
keeping with the development of the Japanese subsidy 
scheme. The Nippon Yusen Kaisha fleet at present 
consists of 75 vessels with an aggregate tonnage of 
26,000 tons. The Osaka Shosen Kaisha fleet includes 
97 vessels, with a total tonnage of 313,000 tons. 
There are many other steamers owned by similar 
companies. At the present time Japanese shipyards are 
turning out more vessels, contracts now made providing 
for the construction of a number of vessels equal to the 
largest and finest American ships on the Pacific Ocean. 
On the other hand, the number of British ships engaged 



THE FIGHT FOR THE PACIFIC 29 

in the trade of the lower Chinese coast, where Japanese 
competition has been felt most keenly, is decreasing. 

" The situation may fairly be represented, so far as 
this general course of trade is concerned, by the 
experience of a British steamship company which has had 
a fleet and vessels engaged in the Chinese coast trade 
since the earliest development of foreign trade in 
China, its particular field being the Chinese coast 
from Hong-Kong to Amoy, Foochow, and over the 
Channel to Formosa. Six years ago this company 
had seven vessels engaged in this trade, and all of 
them were kept busy at good rates. Gradually its 
trade slackened, and vessels were sold, until now the 
company is operating three ships and its dividends 
are constantly decreasing. The Japanese ships have 
increased in number, until there is almost daily service 
between these ports, and the number of ships is 
increasing if anything. It does not necessarily follow 
that all these Japanese ships have a large amount of 
business, for as a matter of fact they do not have 
it ; but they are driving other shipping out of the 
field. As an illustration of their policy in this respect 
and of the manner in which they have built up their 
trade, it may be stated that when the Japanese shipping 
interests planned to go into the field, they asked 
permission of the owners of British ships concerned to 
look over their ships. The Japanese took all necessary 
measurements and duplicated British ships with which 
they were to compete. The fight for business between 
the two interests has been strenuous and almost bitter. 

"The Japanese vessels are reaching out for passenger 
business, and not only offer more discounts from a 
common established tariff, but are offering as good 



30 THE UNVEILED EAST 

if not better accommodation for passengers. One of 
the requirements of their subsidy contracts is a regular 
schedule and prompt arrivals. This aids in the de- 
velopment of their passenger business. Naturally 
this competition has resulted in a considerable decline 
in freight rates ; and this decline, together with the 
fact that there had been a vast increase in the number 
of ships to be supported out of a trade which has 
not increased in proportion, has had its natural results — 
a lack of satisfactory returns from the investments. 
While the net earnings of the large Japanese companies 
for last year (1905) were large and satisfactory, the 
present earnings are far from being such. A Japanese 
vernacular newspaper figures out a loss of 1,638 yen 
a month, or 19,656 yen a year (£1,965), sustained 
by a steamer engaged in the coal trade between Moji 
and Yokohama. Such loss, of course, is not common, 
and at most represents an extreme view of the 
situation, but it may at least be said that the present 
situation is far from being so encouraging as to 
justify the increased investments of the Japanese in 
mercantile shipping." 

Thus on the one side in this battle for the Pacific 
we see the British merchants, capable, with abundant 
funds, with old and well-tried organisations, and with 
established connections. On the other side we see a 
Government working with funds borrowed from the 
English people and using them to destroy British 
trade. I do not wouder at the bitterness of one 
great British merchant in the Far East, who said to 
me, " Every loan made by England to Japan is 
now equivalent to presenting Japan with a knife to 
cut the throats of the British Far Eastern traders." 



CHAPTER III 

HOW JAPAN CAME TO KOREA 



3i 



CHAPTER III 

HOW JAPAN CAME TO KOREA 

KOREA represents Japan's greatest colonial experi- 
ment. Since February, 1 904, it has been actually 
if not nominally under Japanese jurisdiction. The 
story of what has been done in that time in the Hermit 
Kingdom is of double interest to us. First, it concerns 
us as ourselves the greatest of colonising nations, 
for it enables us to see how others attempt to solve 
the problem we have so often had to deal with. Next, 
the fact that Japan and England are to-day in alliance, 
and that England has in a sense stood sponsor for 
the Land of the Rising Sun to other Western nations, 
makes the external and colonising policy of Japan 
a matter of real moment for British people. 

Until thirty years ago Korea remained closed to 
all nations. Japan, its neighbour to the east, had 
a little foot-hold at Fusan. Between Korea and 
Manchuria, its northern neighbour, lay the great border- 
land of the bandit regions, in which no man's life was 
worth an hour's purchase. Time after time Western 
Powers had tried to break down Korean exclusiveness, 
but always in vain. The cables of an American ship, 
the General Sherman, hanging in triumph over the 
gateways of Ping- Yang, proclaimed to the nation the 
destruction that awaited foreigners who visited there. 

Then in 1876 Japan came and conquered. A 
33 3 



34 THE UNVEILED EAST 

treaty of peace and friendship was made between the 
empire and the kingdom, by which three ports were 
opened to Japanese commerce, and Japanese subjects 
were given the privilege of travelling within an area 
of about three miles around each port. The Japanese 
further secured the right of establishing a Legation 
in Seoul, the Korean capital. This treaty was followed 
in a few years by other treaties with America, with 
Great Britain, and with various European Powers. 
Consulates-General and then Legations were established 
in Seoul, and the West found itself in touch with the 
quaintest and most fantastic of the peoples of the 
East. 

The King and autocrat of Korea, living in his 
wonderful Palace underneath the shadow of the 
mountain at Seoul, heard of the marvels of the West. 
Even his great dancing-hall, the hall of the hundred 
pillars, or his wonderful lake of the thousand lilies, 
or his armies of white-robed singing girls, failed to 
satisfy him. He must know of other lands. So he 
had foreign teachers ; the wives of missionaries made 
friends with the Queen, and schemers and intriguers 
of every kind came and advanced their plans for the 
progress of the kingdom. 

Two nations had already marked Korea out as their 
own. Japan wanted it to ensure the safety of her 
territories and to give her people a field for expansion. 
Russia desired it because here she could find safe and 
open ports for the terminus of her already projected 
Trans-Siberian Line. But there was one power in 
the way. China possessed a somewhat nebulous 
suzerainty over Korea. In 1904 Japan declared war 
against China, revealed herself as a military nation, 



HOW JAPAN CAME TO KOREA 35 

scored her great victory, and ended Chinese suzerainty 
once for all. 

The natural result was that Japan immediately 
acquired supreme authority in Seoul. The Japanese 
Minister had a great and influential party of natives 
behind him, and he set about a campaign of reform. 
He was met at point after point by the resolute 
opposition of the Queen. She was as strong a char- 
acter as her husband was weak ; she believed that 
Japan was threatening the independence of her country, 
and so she faced and defeated intrigue after intrigue. 
Count Inouye, the well-known Japanese statesman, 
represented his country at that time. He returned 
to Japan, but before leaving he had an interview with 
the Queen, and made offers of friendship which did 
not meet with a very cordial response. Inouye was 
succeeded by Viscount Miura, a stern soldier. Miura 
determined to solve the Palace difficulty in the quickest 
way. He conspired with the anti-royal party, and one 
night a body of disguised Japanese policemen and 
natives burst into the Palace, Japanese troops openly 
supporting them. 

What followed is best described in the words of 
one living in Seoul at the time, Mrs. Bishop, who was 
then a guest of the British Consulate-General. 

There can be no question of Mrs. Bishop's im- 
partiality or of her opportunity for acquiring exact 
information. It is the more necessary to quote her 
words now, as attempts have recently been made to 
condone or deny the actions of Miura. 

" Japanese troops also entered the Palace," she 
wrote, " and formed in military order under the 
command of their officers round the small courtyard 



3 6 THE UNVEILED EAST 

of the King's house and at its gate, protecting the 
assassins in their murderous work. Before this force 
of Japanese regulars arrived there was a flying rout 
of servants, runners, and Palace-guards, rushing from 
every point of the vast enclosure in mad haste to 
get out of the gates. As the Japanese entered the 
building, the unfortunate King, hoping to divert 
their attention and give the Queen time to escape, 
came into a room where he could be distinctly seen. 
Some of the Japanese assassins rushed in brandishing 
their swords, pulled His Majesty about, and beat 
and dragged about some of the Palace ladies by the 
hair in his presence. The Crown Prince, who was 
in an inner room, was seized, his hat torn off and 
broken, and he was pulled about by the hair and 
threatened with swords to make him show the way 
to the Queen, but he managed to reach the King, 
and they have never been separated since. 

" The Queen, flying from the assassins, was over- 
taken and stabbed, falling down as if dead, but one 
account says that, recovering a little, she asked if the 
Crown Prince, her idol, was safe, on which a Japanese 
jumped on her breast and stabbed her through and 
through with his sword." * 

The Japanese Minister had made a terrible and 
apparently, for a time, an irreparable mistake. He 
was recalled and put on trial by his Government, but 
the case was not proceeded with beyond a preliminary 
inquiry. 

His successor managed to drive the Korean people, 
now bitter against the murderers of their Queen, 
to still further exasperation. The Japanese had not 
1 Korea and Her Neighbours ', by Mrs. Bishop. 



Photograph by F. A. McKenzi 



ENTRANCE TO THE OLD PALACE OF THE 
KOREAN EMPEROR, SEOUL. 




Photograph by F. A. McKen. 



FUSAN, KOREA. 



HOW JAPAN CAME TO KOREA 37 

then learned, and apparently have not yet learned, 
that while you can safely break or make Governments, 
you must not interfere with personal customs. A 
nation will stand an income-tax of a shilling in the 
pound with a smile, but it will smash the railings of 
Hyde Park if you attempt to close the public-houses 
at ten o'clock. The Japanese did the equivalent 
of trying to close the public-houses an hour earlier. 
Under their direction it was decreed, to mention 
only one of several similar matters, that the Korean 
man must leave off his top-knot. To the Korean, 
the top-knot is the symbol of manhood and of 
honour. The day when a boy has his hair made 
into a knot is the proudest of his life, because it 
shows that childhood is over. To be without the 
knot is to be a weakling and an object of contempt. 
The people rose in anger. The Emperor — to give 
him the title he afterwards assumed — just about this 
time escaped from the rebels who were guarding 
him, and took shelter in the Russian Legation, 
and the supremacy of the Japanese was for the 
moment over. 

The spell of Russian supremacy which followed was 
not very brilliant. The Russian Minister in Korea 
at the time, M. Waeber, was a wise and conciliatory 
statesman. He secured the appointment of numerous 
Russian officials ; and a Russian bank and Russian 
military instructors began to appear. His Government 
thought, however, that he was not going fast enough, 
and so he was succeeded by M. Speyer, who, under 
orders from above, tried to quicken the pace. The 
Russians attempted to oust an English official, Mr. 
McLeavy Brown. Here for once England asserted 



3 8 THE UNVEILED EAST 

herself. A British fleet arrived at Chemulpho Harbour, 
and Mr. Brown retained place and power. 

The Russians proved incapable of holding the great 
advantage they had gained through the blunder of 
Viscount Miura. Japan started to win back her old 
position again, and for some years a close diplomatic 
struggle was maintained. The Korean Emperor, a 
weak and well-meaning man, was now pulled one way 
and now the other. The Customs were under the 
charge of Mr. Brown, who proved himself an unbiassed 
and magnificently able controller. He employed the 
methods of Sir Robert Hart, his old chief in China. 
He considered that it was his duty to maintain the 
open door, and to act as the guardian not only of 
the particular interests of England, but of the common 
interests of all white nations. Thus it was that in 
the Korean Customs Service men of almost every 
European power worked in harmony under their Irish 
chief. In a country notoriously corrupt, there was 
in his department no suspicion of corruption or of 
favouritism. Mr. Brown was for a time given control 
of Korean finances, but his position here was never so 
absolute as in the Customs. So far as his power went, 
however, he effected great reforms. Other departments 
of the Korean service were administered by foreign 
instructors, but Mr. Brown stood alone. Korea was 
in the Postal Union ; there was a telegraphic service 
from end to end of the land ; a comfortable railway 
built with American capital ran from Chemulpho to 
Seoul ; and in the capital itself the hiss of the electric 
car was heard. Thus in the early years of this century 
we would have found in Korea a combination of 
modernity and barbarism. The electric light, the 



HOW JAPAN CAME TO KOREA 39 

electric tramcars, and the comfortable railway could 
not blind one to the fact that the administration was 
full of abuses. Bribery was wholesale, corruption had 
eaten into the heart of the Government, and from the 
highest to the lowest there was a reign of intrigue 
and abuse. The two rival nations seemed to aim at 
keeping the government of the land as inefficient as 
possible, and one could only conclude that they were 
deliberately fostering bad administration. The better- 
class Koreans were carefully shunted. 

Ail this time Japanese influence and the number of 
Japanese settlers had been steadily growing. In the 
early nineties two able diplomats stood face to face — 
M. PavlofF, the courtly representative of the Czar, 
and M. Hayashi, a quiet, pleasant, and determined 
spokesman for the Mikado. World events had com- 
bined to make Korea of greater and greater importance. 
Russia and Japan both wanted her as never before, 
and in the closing days of 1903 it became clear that 
the struggle for supremacy between the two must 
soon be settled. 

In February, 1904, Japanese soldiers landed at 
Chemulpho, and Japan at last struck her blow. The 
story of how the powerful Japanese fleet destroyed 
two Russian ships in Chemulpho Harbour, and of 
how the Japanese soldiers occupied Seoul and the 
Japanese army spread over the country, is now a 
matter of history. Japan at this time had the choice 
of two ways before her. She might, making the stress 
of war an excuse, tear up her old treaties and assume 
formal control of Korea, or she might regard Korea 
as her independent ally. Korea itself was powerless 
to resist whatever was done. 



4 o THE UNVEILED EAST 

The latter course was chosen. A policy of annexation 
would have thrown difficulties in the way of the 
Japanese troops marching through the country, and 
would further have given an opening for hostile action 
by European Powers. So a protocol between Japan 
and Korea was signed on February 23 a fortnight 
after the landing of the Japanese soldiers. In this 
protocol the Imperial Government of Japan pledged 
itself in a spirit of firm friendship to ensure the safety 
and repose of the Imperial House of Korea, and it 
further definitely guaranteed the independence and 
territorial integrity of the Korean Empire. 

Most foreigners in Korea at that time, myself 
among them, heartily welcomed the coming of the 
Japanese. We were tired of the corruption and 
exaction of the yangbans and high Korean officials. 
We knew that here was a nation that had been kept 
down for generations by the ineptness of its own 
Government, and we had daily evidence of the harm a 
feeble, incapable, and occasionally cruel administration 
was inflicting on the workers. We believed then that 
Japan, while dealing possibly stern measures against 
the corrupt officials, would give justice to the common 
man, would bring honesty in the administrative work, 
and would open up the country as never before for 
the benefit of world trade. 

Here was Japan's golden opportunity, the oppor- 
tunity to demonstrate to the world that she was as 
mighty in the arts of peace as in her growing conquests 
in war. We believed that she would seize the occasion 
and show in Korea, as she had shown time after time 
under other circumstances, that she had in her possi- 
bilities which the West had hardly yet begun to fathom. 



HOW JAPAN CAME TO KOREA 41 

The Japanese began well. They were already 
pushing ahead a great railway concession for a line 
from Fusan to Seoul. Some of the most corrupt 
Korean officials, including Yi Yong Ik, the greatest 
and the most unscrupulous of all, found it convenient 
to retire from politics for a time. 

Large numbers of Korean coolies were employed 
in carrying supplies to the north for the Japanese 
soldiers, and they were all paid with a punctuality 
and liberality which left them amazed. It seemed 
that Japan would repeat in Korea the strict rectitude 
which had been the distinguishing mark of her occupa- 
tion of Southern Manchuria in 1895. 

Even while battles were being fought in the north, 
Seoul was full of talk of reforms. The currency was 
to be altered, new schools were to be built, new 
railways to be laid, and the Palace purified. The 
soothsayers and fortune-tellers, who formed so pro- 
minent a feature of Seoul life, were, it was rumoured, 
to be cleared out. The incapable Korean army, whose 
officers made up in splendour of uniform what they 
lacked in courage, was to be almost wholly disbanded. 
The Emperor was to place himself in the hands of 
his Japanese advisers ; there was to be no more selling 
of Government posts ; farming was to be transformed ; 
banking was to be modernised ; and the lazy officials 
who did nothing but prey off the people were to be 
swept away. The Japanese were loud in their emphasis 
of the fact that they were in Korea, not alone for their 
own benefit, but as a nation doing the work of all 
civilised races, and securing the maintenance of the 
open door and of equal opportunities for all. 

Then came the succession of remarkable Japanese 



42 THE UNVEILED EAST 

victories and the tone of the statesmen and admini- 
strators altered. Schemes were put forward and 
methods adopted which first amazed and then alienated 
large sections of the white residents. One of the most 
amazing of these new departures went by the name 
of the Nagamori scheme. The Japanese Legation 
proposed that all the waste lands of the country, 
which meant the greater part of Korea, should be 
handed over to a certain Mr. Nagamori, a Japanese 
subject, for the term of fifty years, without payment. 
Mr. Nagamori was to be free to do what he liked 
with the lands, to sell or to keep them, and the 
properties were to be released from taxation for some 
years. If, at the end of fifty years, the Korean 
Government wanted them back, it would have them 
by paying back all the money which had been 
expended, together with compound interest. 

The Japanese Legation fought very hard to get this 
through, but the matter excited such resentment among 
the Koreans and the foreigners that it was allowed 
to lapse. This scheme helped to start a great revulsion 
of feeling amongst the Koreans against the Japanese. 
The revulsion was increased by still more powerful 



CHAPTER IV 

THE PASSING OF EMPIRE 



43 



CHAPTER IV 

THE PASSING OF EMPIRE 

BEFORE discussing the effects of the new Japanese 
administration upon the Korean people, I may 
be allowed to complete the story of the dealings be- 
tween the Korean and the Japanese Governments. 
One result of the Nagamori scheme was to unite the 
Korean Ministry and the Korean people against the 
Japanese. The Emperor and his Ministers could not 
point-blank refuse to do what Mr. Hayashi demanded, 
but they could intrigue, delay, and forget, and shelter 
themselves behind the Japanese solemn promise to main- 
tain the integrity and independence of their country. 

They adopted a policy of passive resistance exceed- 
ingly annoying and hampering to the Japanese. Then 
it was that the Japanese resolved on a further step. 
They had by this time concluded the Treaty of Ports- 
mouth and renewed their alliance with England. Now 
they would assume the sovereignty of Korea. Accord- 
ingly the Marquis Ito, Japan's foremost statesman, 
arrived at Seoul in November, 1905, bringing with 
him a treaty that would at once sweep Korean inde- 
pendence out of existence. The Emperor and his 
advisers resolved that under no circumstances would 
they consent to sign such a document. 

The Korean Emperor had heard of what was 
coming and he determined to appeal to the American 

45 



46 THE UNVEILED EAST 

Government for aid. In the Treaty of 1882, between 
America and Korea, the first article was : 

" There shall be perpetual peace and friendship 
between the President of the United States and the 
King of Chosen, and the citizens and subjects of their 
respective Governments. If other Powers deal unjustly 
or oppressively with either Government, the other will 
exert their good offices, on being informed of the case, 
to bring about an amicable arrangement, thus showing 
their friendly feelings." 

The Koreans thought that now was their opportunity 
to claim the fulfilment of this promise. A well-known 
American resident in Seoul, Mr. Homer B. Hulbert, 
employed in the educational department of the Korean 
Government, was sent with a letter from the Emperor 
to President Roosevelt asking for help against Japan. 
The various grievances of the Korean people were 
stated in detail. A second petition was also drawn up, 
but was kept back until it was too late to send it. Mr. 
Hulbert and the Korean Emperor's advisers were not 
expert in the details of diplomatic requirements, conse- 
quently the messenger was allowed to depart without 
any formal documents that would authorise him to 
act as an accredited representative of the Korean 
Emperor. When he arrived at Washington, he was 
treated according to strict international usage, as a 
messenger empowered to do nothing but to deliver 
his letter. The Washington authorities delayed re- 
ceiving him for a day or two. They then announced 
that he was too late, as a fresh treaty had already 
been concluded between Korea and Japan, by which 
Korea had handed over all its diplomatic work to the 
Japanese Government. 



THE PASSING OF EMPIRE 47 

The whole action on the part of the American 
Government conveys the impression of being a cynical 
and faithless disavowal of a treaty obligation that it 
was inconvenient to fulfil. It has been openly declared 
that President Roosevelt, when seeking to persuade the 
Japanese to agree to the Treaty of Portsmouth, gave 
them an unwritten promise that, so far as America was 
concerned, Japan should have a free hand in Korea. 
How far this is true I cannot say. Those who have 
watched most closely President Roosevelt's fearlessness, 
time after time, in carrying out campaigns that he 
believed to be right, but which he knew would bring 
him great unpopularity, cannot believe that he would 
knowingly break his country's promise, even to a dying 
nation. Probably he and his advisers had altogether 
forgotten this first clause of the treaty. At all events, 
whatever the explanation, America avoided its responsi- 
bilities and the American Government was the first to 
recall its Minister shortly afterwards from Seoul. 

Knowing that Mr. Hulbert had departed for 
Washington, the Japanese hurried on with their plans. 
They had determined that the independence and 
autonomy of Korea should cease. They were willing 
to use as many soft phrases as necessary and to describe 
the transfer in any pleasant language that the Koreans 
desired. But they wanted Korea, and they were going 
to have it. 

Early in November, the Marquis Ito arrived in 
Seoul as special envoy from the Mikado. The entire 
Japanese forces, horse, foot, and artillery, then around 
the city, were brought in front of the Palace and were 
manoeuvred there for days during the whole time of the 
negotiations. 



48 THE UNVEILED EAST 

The Marquis Ito had audience with the Emperor on 
November 15, and presented the proposed treaty 
for his consent. There were four main provisions. 
The control and direction of the external affairs of 
Korea were to be handed over to the Government of 
Japan. The Korean Government was to pledge itself 
not to conclude any act or engagement of an international 
character except through the medium of Japan. A 
Japanese Resident-General was to live at Seoul, primarily 
for the purpose of directing diplomatic affairs, and he 
was to have the right to private and personal audience 
with the Korean Emperor. Japanese residents under 
the Resident-General were to be appointed in any 
part of Korea where the Japanese thought necessary. 
This treaty, as will be seen, stripped the last threads 
of independence from the country and handed it over 
entirely to its neighbour. 

The Emperor and his Ministers resolved not to 
give in. For months before this Mr. Hayashi and 
his assistant, Mr. Hagiwara, had been doing their 
utmost to persuade them to ask for such a protectorate, 
but in vain. When the Emperor was requested to 
agree to the new treaty he replied that such a matter 
could only be decided in consultation with the wise 
men and counsellors of his country. " I did not 
believe the rumours that appeared in papers that Japan 
proposed to assume a protectorate over Korea/' said 
the Emperor ; " I placed faith in Japan's adherence to 
her promise to maintain the independence of Korea. 
When I heard you were coming to my country, I 
was glad, for I believed your mission was to increase 
the friendship between our nations. Your demands 
have therefore taken me entirely by surprise." The 



THE PASSING OF EMPIRE 49 

Marquis Ito persisted, whereupon the Emperor de- 
clared passionately that if he assented he would 
ruin his country, and he would die rather than 
agree. 

The negotiations with the Emperor and his Ministers 
were kept on until the evening of the 17th. The 
Marquis Ito warned the Ministers that if they did not 
agree their obstinacy would mean the instant destruc- 
tion of the Korean Empire. He further urged upon 
them that such a treaty was absolutely necessary 
for the preservation of peace in the Far East. Day 
by day the Japanese troops continued their parades, 
charges, and demonstrations outside the Palace gates. 

On the evening of the 1 7th the Marquis Ito again 
demanded an audience with the Emperor. The 
Emperor refused to grant it, saying that he was ill, 
and that the Marquis must talk the matter over with 
his Cabinet Ministers. Upon this the Japanese Envoy 
went to the Cabinet Ministers and announced to them 
that the Emperor had directed them to reopen negotia- 
tions. Only that afternoon the Ministers had met 
together and sworn once more never to give way. 
Now came the final tug-of-war. It was an amazing 
scene. In the Council Chamber, lit by electricity, the 
two groups sat, the white-robed Koreans squatted on 
the floor, the Japanese in their uniforms around them. 
Now Han Kew Sul, the acting Prime Minister, re- 
peated the unvarying objection of himself and his 
colleagues. " It is robbing us of our independence." 
Now for the hundredth time, they reminded the 
Japanese of their promise, solemnly endorsed and 
signed little more than eighteen months ago, to 
maintain the rights and integrity of the empire. 

4 



5 o THE UNVEILED EAST 

Ito himself, broad-faced, clear-eyed, strong, kept ever 
to the one point, that the permanent peace of the 
Far East required their consent. Now, with the 
winning manner of which he is master, he would 
talk to one of them aside, pitying, regretting, and 
pleading. Now his voice would grow stern and hard, 
and the tobacco-stained teeth would appear prominently. 
Then Hayashi, suave, immovable, would add his 
pleading, and Hagiwara, the young, Western-trained 
diplomat, would come in more brusquely. 

Hour after hour the conference continued. Mid- 
night struck, and still there was no agreement. There 
was the movement of men outside, and the wearied 
Ministers could see through the opening doors the 
uniformed figures of General Hasegawa and others 
with him. The voices of the Japanese grew more 
threatening. " Yield or it means instant destruction 
for all," came the threat. The fevered imaginations 
of the Ministers heard in every crackling bough 
around them the creeping of Japanese soldiers. As 
they entered the Palace that evening, they had moved 
through heavy lines of Japanese troops outside. Were 
the little serge-clad infantry men already through the 
gates ? Was the Emperor already dead ? Were they 
to pass away within an hour, the victims of Japanese 
bullets and bayonets? 

They were old enough to remember former trouble. 
There was not a man in the group but knew of the 
tragic days when the Japanese murdered their Queen. 
Were they going to repeat that deed now ? The 
Korean is not particularly brave, and the Ministers 
tasted the bitterness of death that night. 

Then one Minister, overcome by the persistence of 



THE PASSING OF EMPIRE 51 

the Japanese, began to weaken. u What is the use 
of our resisting ? " he asked ; " the Japanese always 
get their own way in the end." Pak Che Sun, the 
Foreign Minister and one of the most honest servants 
the Korean Emperor ever had, made the suggestion 
that a clause should be added to the treaty that the 
Government of Japan would maintain the welfare and 
dignity of the Imperial House of Korea. The Japanese 
at once agreed. The acting Prime Minister, Han 
Kew Sul, seeing how matters were moving, angrily 
jumped up and declared that he would go at once to 
the Emperor and report the Ministers. He was 
suffered to leave the room, and then, after the Marquis 
Ito and General Hasegawa had both argued with him, 
Mr. Hagiwara, the Secretary of the Japanese Legation, 
seized him by the wrists and, backed by the Japanese 
Chief of Police, flung him into a room and kept him 
prisoner. 

The remaining Ministers were led to believe that 
Han Kew Sul had been murdered. About two in 
the morning they gave way, and orders were telephoned 
to the Foreign Office to bring along the great seal of 
State in order that the new treaty might be signed. 
Pak Che Sun, fearing beforehand that something like 
this might happen, had told his assistant at the Foreign 
Office that the seal was not to be delivered. Con- 
sequently when the telephone message came, the 
assistant refused to obey, and the Japanese were 
compelled to send messengers and take the seal by 
force from him. The Emperor himself did not sign 
the treaty. The Japanese claim that there was no 
reason that he should do so. All that was necessary 
was that his Foreign Minister, acting for him, should 



52 THE UNVEILED EAST 

sign and affix the seal of State. Whether, driven by- 
fear, the Emperor late that night gave way, no man 
can say. Certainly he afterwards repudiated the treaty 
in private and in public. The Japanese themselves 
claim that he has been the real force since then 
behind the efforts to create internal trouble. 

As there have been many contradictory statements 
published concerning the manner in which this treaty 
was secured, it may be perhaps well for me to state 
here that the version I give is based on statements 
made to me by some of the chief actors in the tragic 
drama. It is impossible to give the names of my 
informants, for they fear, rightly or wrongly, that 
such publication would bring them the certain 
vengeance of the Japanese authorities. I have con- 
firmed in every way possible the facts as told to me, 
and I have the best reason for believing them to be 
correct. I do not see how any man who gathers 
evidence as I did, hearing authoritative spokesmen 
on both the Japanese and Korean sides, could do 
otherwise than come to the conclusion that this treaty 
was extracted by force from an unwilling and terrorised 
Government. The attempt made by Japanese pub- 
licists to maintain that the treaty was a glad and 
voluntary surrender on the part of the Koreans, is 
unworthy of them. One has some respect for the 
bold and ruthless buccaneer who takes what he wants 
and glories in it. One has nothing but contempt 
for the hypocrite who picks a man's pocket while 
professing friendship and brotherliness. 

The news of the signing of the treaty was received 
with consternation by the Korean people. The bold 
hillmen of the north poured down towards Seoul. At 



THE PASSING OF EMPIRE 53 

Ping- Yang they were stopped by the urgent counsel 

of the white men there and the native Christians. 

"Let us go south," they said, " let us die around the 

throne of our Emperor. What use is it for us to 

live when the independence of our country is gone ? " 

Petitions poured in on the Emperor asking for a 

repudiation of the treaty. " I fully appreciate the 

public wrath," said the Emperor weakly, " but you 

yourselves must find a way of arranging this." Pak 

Che Sun, horrified next day at his own act, attempted 

to commit suicide. The shops put up their shutters 

as a sign of mourning and there were fights between the 

Korean crowds and the Japanese gendarmes. Several 

leading Koreans committed suicide. Chief among these 

was a noted patriot and statesman, Min Yong Whan, 

who had been Special Korean Representative in London 

for Queen Victoria's Jubilee, and who after that had 

spent some time in America studying and adopting 

foreign ways. Forty times in succession he forwarded 

petitions to the Emperor, but could not obtain audience. 

Then he sent for his mother to take charge of his 

household, and wrote letters to various friends pleading 

for his country. 

Here is a translation of one of his letters to an 
American friend : 

" I, Min Yong Whan, have been unable to do my 
duty as a true subject of my country, and not having 
served her well, she and her people are brought to 
this present hopeless condition. Foreseeing the coming 
death of my country, I am now offering my humble 
farewell to His Majesty, my Emperor, and to the 
twenty millions of my fellow countrymen, in an excess 



54 THE UNVEILED EAST 

of despair and utter hopelessness. I know that my 
death will accomplish nothing, and that my people 
will all be lost in the coming life-and-death struggle ; 
but seeing that I can do nothing to prevent this by 
living, I have taken my decision. 

<c You must know the aim and actions of the 
Japanese at the present day ; I therefore beseech you 
to use your good offices in making known to the 
world whatever injustice my people may suffer, and 
you may use your magnanimous efforts in trying to 
uphold our independence. If you can do this for 
my land, even my dying soul can rest happily. Do 
not misunderstand the good intentions of my people. 
I trust you will not forget our first treaty (with 
America) made between your republic and my country. 
May there be practical proof of your sympathy from 
your Government and your people ; then even the 
dead shall know, and be thankful to you. 
" Yours in despair, 
(signed and sealed) " Min Yong Whan." 1 

He then killed himself. Eight months afterwards 
a servant going to the room where his blood-stained 
death coat had been pushed away, found that a 
mysterious bamboo had sprung up there. The news 
went all over Korea that heaven had spoken. The 
shooting bamboo showed directly from the other 
world that he had done well. The bamboo became 
the centre of a pilgrimage, and the Japanese police 
had to take steps to turn the crowds away. 

The foreign Legations were quickly withdrawn, 
and the Japanese continued to tighten their hold of 
1 The Korean Review \ Jan. 1906 



THE PASSING OF EMPIRE 55 

the administrative machinery of the country. The 
postal and telegraph departments had already been 
taken over from the Koreans and placed in the 
hands of Japanese ; shortly before the signing of the 
new treaty the British head of the Customs, Mr. 
McLeavy Brown, was driven to resign, and his office 
was assumed by a Japanese ; a Japanese financial 
adviser ruled over the monetary affairs of the State ; 
a Japanese bank kept the Government accounts ; the 
railways were in Japanese hands ; the Japanese had 
been given the right of fishing in internal waters ; 
and the Japanese officials were the real powers in 
local administration. The Marquis Ito came to Seoul 
as first Resident-General, an act of great self-sacri- 
fice on his part. He is an old man, the premier 
statesman of his land, who might well have demanded 
ease in an honoured old age. Instead he took up 
the most difficult post his country had to give him. 

In July, 1906, the next step was made in the 
Japanese advance. Since the conclusion of the 
November treaty, the Japanese had been greatly dis- 
satisfied with the action of the Korean Emperor. They 
suspected that he was financing revolutionists in various 
parts of the State. They knew that he was using every 
effort to escape from their control. They realised 
that he hated their rule and would do anything 
possible to overthrow it. Up to now he had been 
allowed to keep his own troops around his Palace and 
to live there as he would. On July 2, 1906, the 
Marquis Ito had an audience with the Emperor and 
demanded that the Korean police guarding the Palace 
should be removed and that Government police, under 
a Japanese head, should take their place. The 



S6 THE UNVEILED EAST 

Emperor pleaded for delay, but even while he was 
pleading the Japanese took over the gates. They at 
once made a rule that no one was to be allowed to 
enter or to leave the Palace, save upon the order of 
the Japanese or of the Minister of the Household. 

From that time the personal liberties of the Emperor 
have been more and more curtailed. Large numbers 
of his personal associates and friends have been sent 
away. The Japanese claim that they are cleansing 
the Palace of debauchery, a somewhat ludicrous claim 
to any one who knows the real life of the Korean 
Emperor. The aim has been to take from him all 
control over his money and all association with his 
friends. It was very shrewdly thought that a steady 
course of isolation and a daily diet of fear would 
break the spirit of the monarch. The notion seemed 
last autumn to have worked out well, for, after 
months of protest and denunciation, the Emperor 
was apparently induced late in 1906 to consent to 
the despatch of a letter of goodwill and friendship 
to the Emperor of Japan. 

But even this letter, if he actually agreed to it, 
was apparently nothing but a guise. The Japanese 
now claim that he is still plotting against them. As 
I write this, the semi-official Japanese papers are full of 
warnings which can mean nothing except that if the 
Emperor is not careful he will be dethroned. " The 
Emperor still encourages the presence of all kinds 
of charlatans and schemers," said The Japan Weekly 
Mail (Jan. 19, 1907), " and still appears to entertain 
a conviction that safety for himself and his kingdom 
is to be secured only by ' kicking against the pricks/ 
It will be remembered that within the past few days 



THE PASSING OF EMPIRE 57 

news has been received of the discovery that a sum 
of 200,000 yen has been paid out of the imperial 
exchequer for the purpose of an insurrection in one 
of the southern provinces, and that the identity of 
the household official through whose hands the money 
passed was said to have been ascertained. Whether 
the rumour be true or false we cannot tell, and indeed 
we should have imagined that the finances of the 
Palace were too closely supervised to allow of such 
large misappropriation. However, the story seems to 
find credence in Japan, and in its context is recalled 
an incident which occurred at the farewell party given 
by Marquis Ito on the eve of his recent departure 
for Japan. It is related that one of those present 
composed a couplet in the sense that as the rooks 
pulled up the seed sown by the farmer and refused 
to be driven away, they must be treated to a volley. 
This, though couched in the form of an idle stanza, 
was regarded as a true reading of the political baro- 
meter. The rooks were insatiable and must be 
destroyed." 

So much for the outward happenings in the 
absorption of Korea. What effect has this change 
had upon the people themselves ? Has it made for 
good government? How has Japan revealed herself 
as a capable colonising power ? These questions I 
will deal with in the next chapter. 1 

1 The protocol between Japan and Korea concluded on February 23 
1904, upon which the Koreans relied for the maintenance of their 
independence, ran as follows : — 

Art. I. — For the purpose of maintaining a permanent and solid, 
friendship between Japan and Korea, and firmly establishing peace 
in the Far East, the Imperial Government of Korea shall place full 
confidence in the Imperial Government of Japan, and adopt the advice 
of the latter in regard to improvements in administration. 



5 8 THE UNVEILED EAST 

Art. IT. — The Imperial Government of Japan shall, in a spirit 
of firm friendship, ensure the safety and repose of the Imperial House 
of Korea. 

Art. III. — The Imperial Government of Japan definitely guarantees 
the independence and territorial integrity of the Korean Empire. 

Art. IV. — In case the welfare of the Imperial House of Korea, 
or the territorial integrity of Korea, is endangered by the aggression 
of a third Power or internal disturbances, the Imperial Government 
of Japan shall immediately take such necessary measures as circum- 
stances require, and, in such case, the Imperial Government of 
Korea shall give full facilities to promote all action of the Imperial 
Japanese Government. The Imperial Government of Japan may, 
for the attainment of the above-mentioned object, occupy, when the 
circumstances require it, such places as may be necessary from 
strategic points of view. 

Art. V. — The Governments of the two countries shall not, in the 
future, without mutual consent, conclude with a third Power such 
an arrangement as may be contrary to the principles of the present 
protocol. 

Art. VI. — Details in connection with the present protocol shall 
be arranged as circumstances may demand, between the Repre- 
sentative of Japan and the Minister of State for Foreign Affairs 
of Korea. 



CHAPTER V 
THE DREAM OF THE MARQUIS ITO 



59 



CHAPTER V 

THE DREAM OF THE MARQIUS ITO 

IN the summer of 1904 I made a short visit to 
Japan from Manchuria, taking with me my Korean 
body-servant, who was then dressed in Korean national 
garments. Whenever the boy went out into the 
streets he was surrounded by curious crowds. Time 
after time he came to me and begged money to 
enable him to buy foreign clothes. At last I yielded, 
and he obtained a very smart summer suit of European 
cut. Thinking to flatter him 1 remarked : 

" Why, boy, you are quite like an Englishman ! " 

He smiled, but shook his head. 

" No, master," he said, " Japanese ! " For to him 
then the Japanese were the supreme people of the 
world. 

In 1906 I revisited the boy's native city, and he 
came to see me, dressed in European fashion, and well 
dressed too. 

" You look quite like a Japanese," I remarked, 
having our old conversation in remembrance. 

But in place of smiling, he frowned and shook 
his head. " Korean, master," he said emphatically. 
" Korean, not Japanese ! " 

u But why not Japanese ? " I asked. 

"Master, the Japanese have stolen my country," 
came the slow, emphatic answer. 
61 



62 THE UNVEILED EAST 

That boy was typical. His changed views were 
but an echo of the alteration in opinion all over the 
country. 

When on a February evening in 1904 I stood on 
the ice-covered wharves at Chemulpho, the main 
seaport of Korea, watching the advance-guard of the 
coming Japanese army disembarking on the mainland 
of Asia, I saw them with exultation in my heart. 
The blaze from paraffin and coal fires on the water's 
edge revealed the sturdy and well-clothed soldiers of 
the Mikado as they stepped briskly from the lighters 
to the rocks. I turned to my fellow Europeans there. 
c< At last," we said to one another, " strength and 
justice have come to Korea." The very natives 
smiled on the new arrivals. For myself I was proud 
to be the first white man to greet the Japanese General 
with words of welcome. 

That was three years ago. A little over two years 
after that memorable February night I travelled again 
from north to south in Korea. I came across many 
of my old friends — diplomatic officials, missionaries, 
teachers, merchants, and natives. In 1904 they had 
been almost without exception enthusiastic for Japan ; 
in 1906, they were almost as unanimously critical, 
unsympathetic, and full of denunciation. The change 
had come because of what they had seen of the 
methods of Japanese administration. Everywhere, 
from men of the most varied type, I heard the same 
story, a tale of oppression, exaction, and wholesale 
robbery. 

When the Japanese first came to Korea, they were 
received by the common people with sympathy and 
hope. To-day the common people hate them with 



THE DREAM OF THE MARQUIS ITO 63 

the most intense bitterness. The first cause for this 
hatred is national. The Koreans say that the Japanese 
wormed their way among them under the guise of 
friendship, with fair words and with solemn promises 
to maintain their independence. Then, having planted 
their troops all over the land and broken the Korean 
power, they violated their promises and deprived the 
nation of its freedom. The more intelligent Koreans 
admit, as they cannot but admit, that the loss was 
largely their own fault. Their country relied upon 
treaty promises in place of national efficiency. It 
had degenerated and did not deserve to live. And 
yet the degeneration affected the officials rather than 
the mass of common people. " If we had only a 
chance," the men of the north have said to me more 
than once, " we could show that we are fit to hold 
our own." 

The national aspect is not the only or the most 
important one. Had the Japanese done justly, and 
had they behaved fairly to the masses, the wounded 
national sentiment would have been but a minor 
danger. The Korean coolie, farmer, and tradesman 
were tired of being corruptly and cruelly governed, 
and they would have welcomed any administration, 
under whatever name, which gave them safety and 
equitable dealing. But they complain that, cruel and 
abominable as were the old administrators of their 
own race, the Japanese are worse. 

The Japanese have admittedly brought certain great 
improvements to the country. They have constructed 
a fine broad-gauge railway from Fusan to Wiju, inter- 
secting Korea from north to south. This line is 
well built, its road-bed is good, its bridges are of 



64 THE UNVEILED EAST 

steel with solid stone abutments, it has heavy rails, 
standard broad-gauge 4 ft. 8J in., Westinghouse air- 
brakes, and fairly comfortable cars. Other lines are 
planned, or are now in the course of construction, 
from Seoul and from Ping- Yang to Gensan on the 
east coast. There is, further, a little military line 
of which nothing is being said by the authorities, 
running from further up the east coast towards 
Manchuria. Several great military roads have been 
cut through the country, roads so carefully laid and 
graded that they can be used if necessary for railways. 
These roads and the railways have opened up parts 
hitherto almost inaccessible. 

The next great Japanese improvement has been 
the reform of the currency. This was a very much 
needed step, for the Korean currency in olden times 
was bad beyond description. Counterfeiting was 
almost a regular business, and a very large part of 
the coinage in circulation was admittedly spurious. 
The counterfeits were divided into groups — good, 
medium, bad, and those so bad that they could only 
be palmed off after dark. Whenever one received 
a considerable sum of Korean money, it was necessary 
to engage the services of an expert, who would care- 
fully go over all the coins and pick out the good 
from the fraudulent. The reform of such a currency 
was bound to create great confusion, and it did so. 
There may be a question as to whether Mr. Megata, 
the Japanese financial adviser to the Korean Govern- 
ment, effected the reform in the easiest and most 
prudent way, but his reform was good. The trouble 
in the transformation was temporary — the benefit is 
permanent. 



THE DREAM OF THE MARQUIS ITO 65 

Something has also been done to assist education, 
but here I was surprised at the very little progress 
made. There is much talk of schools of all kinds, 
but most of the work, so far, seems to have ended in 
talk. There is a medical school of apparently doubtful 
utility, and some young Koreans are being taught 
engineering. A limited number of common schools 
have been started in the country to teach young Koreans 
Japanese. In some cases these schools are taught by 
Japanese military officers. A high Japanese official in 
Seoul denied to me, in most positive fashion, that 
it was their intention to teach Japanese in the common 
Korean schools. " Of course," he said, " we have 
always meant to give a Korean education in the Korean 
schools." I went into the country and saw for myself, 
examining pupils and textbooks. I found that the 
official was misinformed. There was no attempt to 
teach Korean ; the education was all in Japanese. In 
one case, where the pupils were all Koreans, the 
Japanese teacher knew no Korean. 

There have been a few minor improvements, of which 
the suppression of the sorcerers deserves to be noted. 
These sorcerers undoubtedly did much harm among the 
people. The army has been reduced and the number 
of native civil service officials greatly diminished. 
There has been much talk of increasing the pay of 
officials in order to avoid the necessity of extortion. 
Here again what I saw in the country last summer 
did not point to this being done on a large or effective 
scale. 

One complaint of the Korean people is that the 
Japanese have taken over the entire machinery of 
the Government of the country and are using it mainly 

5 



66 THE UNVEILED EAST 

and directly for the financial profit of the Japanese 
people. They are, officially and unofficially, pushing 
forward schemes of extortion, robbery, and cruelty 
which in three years have inflicted more actual damage 
than the worst Government of the old style could 
have done in thirty years. 

The Japanese still maintain a Korean Cabinet and 
Korean officials in various parts of the country. 
This Cabinet and these officials are mere puppets, 
powerless and only useful as dummies for the 
Japanese. When the Japanese administrators wish to 
put through a particularly impudent scheme of appro- 
priation, they employ the machinery of the Korean 
Cabinet. The Japanese profess not to interfere in 
local administration. It would be more correct to 
say that they interfere in every branch of local affairs 
where they can obtain a profit for themselves, and they 
leave untouched those branches that humanitarianism 
and civilisation alone would incline them to reform. 

One of the earliest acts of the Japanese was to 
acquire without compensation various branches of local 
administration where places could be found for their 
nationals as officials. The finances were taken over 
by a Japanese and have been shamelessly exploited for 
the peculiar benefit of the Japanese. Large numbers 
of Japanese subjects have been engaged at salaries often 
two or three times as much as they would be given 
in their own country. The Japanese are being given 
concessions of every kind, to the exclusion of both 
Koreans and foreigners. The Korean Government 
is compelled to borrow money from Japan to be used 
for the benefit of Japanese subjects in Korea. Thus 
for instance, nearly two million yen, borrowed from 



THE DREAM OF THE MARQUIS ITO 67 

Japan and charged to the national expenses, are to be 
employed in providing water-works for the Japanese 
town of Chemulpho. For some time the Japanese 
were permitted to smuggle great quantities of goods 
into Korea, the Japanese Customs officers, paid by the 
Korean Government, taking no effective preventive 
measures. Almost every week there come stories of 
the engagement of Japanese experts at high salaries, 
the granting of premiums to Japanese officials, the 
enlistment of additional Japanese policemen, and 
so on. 

The next cause of trouble is one that is even more 
serious — the wholesale seizure of private land by the 
Japanese authorities in Korea for their own people. 
During the war large sections of land were marked 
out as being required by the Japanese for military 
purposes. The sections represent some of the most 
valuable sites in the country, several square miles of 
the best river-land in the suburbs of Seoul, an immense 
area outside Ping-Yang, and great districts further 
north. Very large areas of land were taken all 
along either side of the railway. In the majority of 
cases no compensation whatever was paid to the 
old owners for this land ; in other cases the com- 
pensation was so inadequate that it meant ruin for the 
people. The lands seized for military purposes have 
been kept since the conclusion of peace, and are now 
being used as settlements for civilian Japanese. By 
this many thousands of formerly prosperous Korean 
families have been brought to ruin. 

The Japanese authorities attempt to defend them- 
selves over this by claiming that land tenure in Korea 
is in a very chaotic state. They say that all land 



68 THE UNVEILED EAST 

belongs to the Emperor, who has the right to take 
whatever he pleases without compensation. They are 
acting on the authority of the Emperor, and therefore 
have the same right. Even if this were true, the 
injustice of yesterday under the old Government would 
not excuse plundering to-day. But it is not true. 
The system of land tenure was described in 1889 by 
Dr. Allen, who for many years afterwards was 
American Minister in Korea. " All unoccupied land 
belongs to the King," said Dr. Allen, u but any man 
may take up a homestead, and, after tilling it and 
paying taxes on it for a period of three years, it be- 
comes his own, and must be purchased should the 
Government need it." 

From the beginning of the war, the Japanese 
permitted the lowest classes of their subjects to pour 
over Korea like a flood. These Japanese coolies 
have behaved with a brutality hard to describe. They 
have simply terrorised the Korean people. They have 
robbed them of their lands, have forced them to 
labour for them at what pay they pleased, and have 
acted the part of uncontrolled bullies. The Korean 
magistrates did not dare to control these representatives 
of the conquering race ; the Japanese residents would 
not. In every part of Korea, from the extreme south 
to the north, I have heard the same kind of stories 
about the excesses of the great mass of low-class 
Japanese in Korea. 

It is unfortunate that the Japanese residents sent by 
their own Government to various parts of Korea seem 
to consider that their duty is not impartially to ad- 
minister justice, but to stand up for their own 
countrymen. Everywhere the Koreans believe that 



THE DREAM OF THE MARQUIS ITO 69 

it is of no use to appeal to the Japanese residents 
for justice. 

If I were to seek to relate in any detail the stories 
of cruelty done by Japanese coolies, gendarmes, and 
soldiers in Korea that have been told to me by 
reliable witnesses, I do not know where I would stop. 
When I passed through the city of Ping-Yang last 
July, the missionaries came to me on the midday 
of Sunday, and asked if I would speak to the great 
congregation of about fifteen hundred people that 
would assemble there that afternoon. cc Why do you 
not have your regular preacher ? " I asked. a Our 
chief native minister was to have taken the service," 
they told me, " but yesterday afternoon four Japanese 
soldiers entered his house. They went towards his 
women's quarter, and when he tried to stop them 
they fell on him and beat him so badly that he cannot 
move out of the house." When that afternoon I 
stood before that great throng, the women to my 
left and the men to my right, the question seemed 
to come up from the crowd, u What can we, a people 
not skilled in arms and not used to fighting, do with 
this stern warrior race over us ? " 

As a second example, let me quote from the report 
of an American missionary in another district in the 
north, a man known to me. 

" The chief source of our problems this year," he 
writes, " has been the Japanese oppression. The 
various evils carried on under the name of Japanese 
occupancy would take too long to enumerate, but a 
few ought to be mentioned. The seizure of Korean 
property both by soldiers and civilians, without com- 
pensation, still goes on. This is particularly true of 



70 THE UNVEILED EAST 

the railroad, which is constantly making arbitrary 
changes in its course, involving the seizure of a new 
right of way, and the ejection of another set of 
Korean proprietors from their houses and lands. 
Forced labour is still continued in many places, though 
the revolt against it has compelled the payment of 
wages in many parts of the province. This is due 
largely to the stand made by the Church, encouraged 
of course by the missionary in charge. In the districts 
where the Christians are in a majority, the labourers 
organised and refused to work without pay. The 
heathen took heart from the Christians' example, and, 
though there were many thrashings and outrages, in 
the places where the Koreans were firm the Japanese 
gradually gave in and began to pay wages. This 
victory of the infant Church marks an epoch. . . . 

" The forestry concession is another source of 
trouble. The chief end of this iniquity seems to be 
the cutting of every piece of standing timber larger 
than a walking-cane, and the monopoly of any and 
all lumber produced in Korea. Consequently many 
proprietors of wooded grave sites or other pieces of 
timber land have found themselves totally unable to 
protect their property." 

Encouraged by their freedom, the Japanese coolies 
and soldiers often assumed a very hostile and offensive 
attitude to white people. Last summer I heard many 
complaints of assaults from Europeans and American 
men and women whom I knew to be peaceable, quiet, 
and law-abiding citizens. It was practically impossible 
to secure redress from the Japanese authorities for 
these outrages, every difficulty being placed in the 
way of identifying the culprits. The brutal and 



THE DREAM OF THE MARQUIS ITO 71 

unprovoked ill-treatment of Mr. and Mrs. Weigall, 
and the assaults on the Roman Catholic Bishop, the 
American Consul-General, American missionary ladies, 
and many others, are cases in point. 

I know that this reign of terror has excited resent- 
ment among some of the Japanese people themselves. 
My one hope for real improvement is that the mass 
of better-class people in Japan will realise what is 
taking place and will demand of their authorities a 
stricter hand over the young soldiers and coolies. 
I at first could not believe the details of some of the 
stories told me. I had known the Japanese soldier 
in war, brave, chivalrous, well-disciplined, and scrupu- 
lously honest. It seemed to me impossible that men 
wearing the Japanese uniform should be guilty of such 
extortion, corruption, torture, and stupid cruelty. 
What I saw for myself compelled me, however, to 
change my opinion. 

The most amazing thing about the Japanese ad- 
ministration so far has been its inefficiency. It has not, 
for instance, succeeded in controlling brigandage or 
in maintaining order. There have been during the 
past winter more robberies in the very heart of the 
country and at the gates of the capital than ever 
before. Every effort to make the guard tighter 
around the Korean Emperor has not been able to 
stop the intrigues which go on among the old officials. 
Corruption is still common, and the worst abominations 
of the old prison system are maintained as before. 

Another side of the Korean administration which 
is open to much criticism is the way in which the 
Japanese have permitted their subjects to establish 
business destructive to the health and morals of the 



72 THE UNVEILED EAST 

native population. In Japan itself the consumption 
of opium is strictly forbidden and in Korea up to 
the time the Japanese entered it the same rule applied. 
To-day Japanese pedlars are going all over the north 
selling morphia freely. They have created a great 
trade and the harm they have done is not easily 
measured. 

Last summer my attention was called to the state of 
the prisons, and I visited two of them, both in towns 
under the control of Japanese residents. In the first, 
at Ping- Yang, I found eighteen men and one woman 
confined in one cell. Some of the men were fastened 
to the ground by wooden stocks. The prisoners were 
emaciated and their bodies showed plain signs of 
horrible disease. Their clothing was of the poorest, 
the cell was indescribably filthy, and several of the men 
had been confined there, without exercise and without 
employment, for years. One man had been six years 
in the cell. 

The second prison I visited, at Sun-chon, was much 
worse. In the inner room there — so dark that for 
some moments I could see nothing — I found three 
men fastened flat on the ground, their heads and feet 
in stocks, and their hands tied together. The room 
had no light or ventilation, save from a small hole 
in the wall. The men's backs were fearfully scarred 
from beatings. Their arms were cut to the bone 
in many places by the ropes that had been tightly 
bound around them, and the wounds thus made were 
suppurating freely. The upper parts of the limbs were 
swollen. Great weals and blisters could be seen on 
their flesh. One man's eyes were closed, and the 
sight gone, heavy suppuration oozing from the closed 



- X 




THE DREAM OF THE MARQUIS ITO 73 

lids. Presumably the eyes had been knocked in by 
blows. The men had lain thus confined, without 
moving, for days. 

I had them brought out into the sunshine. It was 
difficult work. One of them had already largely lost 
the use of his limbs, owing to their contraction. 
They were all starved, and they were so broken that 
they had not even spirit to plead, save to utter a few 
low cries. The place was the nearest approach to 
hell I have ever seen. Since my return to England 
word has reached me that one of the men died 
from the ill-treatment a few days after I left. 

While in Japan last summer I had the privilege 
of a long interview with the Marquis Ito, the Resident- 
General and head of the Japanese administration. The 
Marquis Ito is, as all the world knows, the greatest 
and most famous of the elder statesmen of Japan. 
He himself would, I know, be the last to approve of 
such abuses. 

As the Marquis unfolded his plans for the improve- 
ment of Korea, my heart rose. There was to be 
reform, justice, and conciliation. Any mistakes in the 
past were to be remedied. " I feel that I stand 
midway between the Koreans and my own people, to 
see justice done to both," the Marquis declared. 

Standing in the cell at Sun-chon, I recalled those 
words, and, despite the strength, sincerity, and high 
purpose of the Marquis, they seemed little better than 
a hollow mockery. 



CHAPTER VI 

MANCHURIA AFTER THE WAR 



75 



CHAPTER VI 

MANCHURIA AFTER THE WAR 

I MADE two journeys through Manchuria in 1906. 
The first, in July and August, was from Antung 
to Moukden over the new mountain railway, and 
thence southwards to Yingkow. The second journey, 
later in the year, was from Port Arthur to Liaoyang 
and Harbin, and on by the Siberian railway to Irkutsk. 

Two new towns have arisen during the past eighteen 
months on either side of the River Yalu, at the terminus 
of the Seoul-Wiju Railway. On the Korean side is 
the town of Sin-Wiju, about four miles south of old 
Wiju. This is a purely Japanese settlement, on the 
edge of a small Korean village. There are large 
military saw-mills and timber stacks on the river bank. 
A station of the Korean Customs was established 
there in the summer of 1906. There are several 
Japanese hotels and bath-houses, and a number of 
shops. 

At present the only way of crossing the river is by 
boat, but a great railway bridge is to be constructed at 
this point. From Antung itself a new mountain rail- 
way, constructed by the Japanese during the war, 
crosses the Motienling range to Moukden, a distance 
of about one hundred and eighty miles. This railway, 
with its thirty-inch-gauge track, is of very little import- 
ance from a commercial point of view, for its carrying 

77 



78 THE UNVEILED EAST 

capacity is very small. A broad-gauge line is now in 
course of construction, and when it is completed it 
will be possible to land troops from Japan at Fusan, in 
the south of Korea, and carry them to the heart of 
Manchuria, without change of cars, in less than three 
days from the hour they march out of their barracks 
in Central Japan. 

New Antung is situated just outside the Chinese 
city. The Japanese have laid out roadways for quite 
a large town, and when I landed there the place had 
about five thousand Japanese inhabitants. A great 
earthen embankment was being constructed around 
the new settlement, to keep out the river at its highest 
flood, and everywhere there was ceaseless activity. 
The new streets are broad and the many Japanese 
stores were well stocked with Japanese goods. There 
were the inevitable bath-houses and theatres. Japanese 
carpenters, skilled and dexterous men, were busy con- 
structing dwellings from flimsy boards. A screen or 
two, a roll of matting, and a paper window soon made 
each little house look home-like. The Japanese have 
laid down a narrow-gauge tramway, pushed by man 
power, from the old Chinese town to the new settle- 
ment. 

The Chinese city of Antung is of far more interest, 
in many ways, than the new settlement. It is a busy 
and important commercial centre, with a population 
said to number over sixty thousand. Hundreds of 
Chinese junks can be seen at any time lying along the 
river banks, or unloading their cargoes at the wharves. 
These junks do a considerable trade between Antung 
and Chefoo and other Chinese and Korean coast towns. 
Antung boasts that it has eighty large and 470 small 




~#~- i 




Photographs by F. A. McKenzie." 

THE ANTUNG-MOUKDEN RAILWAY. 



MANCHURIA AFTER THE WAR 79 

merchants. The streets near the river are full of 
the great " hongs " of the merchants, monster 
warehouses packed with goods. The streets are made 
gay by striking decorative signs, big poles twenty feet 
high, in black and gold, beautifully ornamented, 
and standing straight up in the street, announcing 
the names and wares of the shopkeepers. On 
the hills around the city are some fine modern 
temples, fitted up in costly fashion. I had made friends 
with the chief priest of the principal of these temples 
when last visiting Antung, and he invited me on my 
arrival to use one of the outer courts as my home 
during my stay. I did so. The surroundings were 
novel and bizarre. In the court to my right stood the 
God of War, a great and fearsome mounted figure, 
with two guardians, ready to be led out at any time. 
In the covered chapel close to my door the River God 
rested, and here, morning after morning, at an early 
hour, the fishermen and traders would assemble at the 
summons of a harmonious gong, and would chant, bow 
and kow-tow, afterwards coming into the yard and 
firing off crackers to frighten away evil spirits. 

I found business in the Chinese city somewhat 
depressed. The people were very bitter against the 
Japanese. The common folk complained of the harsh- 
ness and bullying tactics of the Japanese coolies, and 
the traders were incensed by the open greed of the 
authorities. The city was still under military admini- 
stration, and responsible Japanese civilians openly ex- 
pressed their regret to me at some of the methods the 
military had adopted. " We have spent hundreds of 
millions on this war,' said one of the leading Japanese. 
" If we hope to reap the full fruits of our victory we 



80 THE UNVEILED EAST 

must retain the good-will of the people. Yet in order 
to raise a hundred thousand yen or so our military 
officials impose unpopular taxes and cause general 
discontent. They have lost sense of proportion." 

There was much grumbling about the seizure of 
river land by the Japanese for their settlement. The 
Chinese were also incensed by the Japanese monoplies 
that were being established. The boat in which I had 
crossed the river landed at Japanese monopoly steps, 
and the cross river traffic was managed by a Japanese 
company. The little narrow-gauge tramway represented 
another Japanese enterprise. Japanese coolies were 
competing with Chinese coolies for all kinds of manual 
work, and the industrial rivalry was severe. 

The two main complaints were about the Japanese 
Customs' privileges and the taxation of the Yalu 
timber trade. The Chinese merchants declared that 
it was more and more difficult to compete with the 
new Japanese merchants, because while the Chinese had 
to pay both full Customs' duty at the ports from 
which they took their goods and likin (local customs) 
at Antung, the Japanese paid neither. It was easy 
to see the effect of this Japanese tariff privilege on 
local trade. When I first visited Antung in 1904, the 
Chinese shops displayed large quantities of British 
and American goods ; now I found that in line after 
line Japanese manufactures had taken their place. 

Antung is a great centre of the timber trade, 
tapping as it does the forests of the Yalu. These 
forests represent phenomenal wealth. Acquaintances 
of my own who explored the upper reaches of the 
river last year tell me that they will bear comparison 
with some of the finest timber tracks in Western 



MANCHURIA AFTER THE WAR 81 

America. It will be remembered that the Russian 
timber concession on the Yalu was one of the ostensible 
causes leading up to the war. It has been the custom 
in the past for Chinese merchants in Antung to 
form small syndicates for felling the timber. They 
equipped and despatched parties of woodsmen to 
bring down raft-loads. The Japanese military ad- 
ministration at Antung saw in this timber trade a 
possible source of revenue. It bought great quantities 
of the cargoes at prices fixed by itself — and there was a 
considerable margin of difference between its estimate of 
value and that of the timber merchants — it demanded 
one log out of every eleven brought down, and it 
imposed a tax for military protection on each length of 
wood cut. This for the time practically killed the 
trade. When I was in Antung everything pointed to 
the intention of the Japanese to monopolise the timber 
rights. They would be of great value to them. Cheap 
timber is essential to several industries in Northern 
China ; and with control of the Yalu forests in addition 
to their home supplies, the Japanese will so be able 
to regulate the price in the Far East that the dependent 
industries will be in their hands. For instance, a 
cheapening of the price of wood in Japan and an 
increase in China would kill the Chinese match trade. 
No doubt the timber monopoly will be carried out 
under a slight disguise. Probably a nominal Chino- 
Japanese company will be established, a very trans- 
parent device which the Japanese have adopted in 
other directions in their hunt for domination. 

While Antung is an important Chinese trading 
centre, it does not possess the high commercial value 
which its geographical position has been thought by 

6 



82 THE UNVEILED EAST 

some to give it. It carries on an extensive trade in 
raw silk cocoons, and probably the Japanese will soon 
establish silk mills there, to the detriment of Chefoo. 
But its capacity as a distributing centre for foreign 
goods is limited. Its shipping and wharf facilities 
are poor. Ships with a draught of more than eight 
feet cannot come up to the wharves, for the river, 
while very broad, is also very shallow. Beyond 
Antung the limit is six feet. Antung itself is only 
suitable as a distributing centre for Manchuria, not 
for Korea. The country immediately behind it is 
exceedingly mountainous, sparsely populated, and very 
difficult to reach. The one town of any size between 
it and Liaoyang is Feng-Fang-Cheng, about thirty-three 
miles from Antung. Directly northwards there are 
practically no towns of any size whatever within easy 
reach. The country up the River Yalu, while 
potentially rich, is difficult of access, and is not 
yet fully open for commerce. It is far from safe 
and is inhabited by a race of mountaineers and 
woodsmen whose lawlessness is notorious in Eastern 
Asia. 

This belt of territory was for long the no-man's land 
of the East. It was officially recognised by both China 
and Korea as the bandit region, the lawless border 
for which neither was responsible. This continued 
until quite modern times, when Li Hung Chang, 
acting for the Chinese Government, determined to 
establish settled government there. But the traditions 
of centuries of disorder are not soon wiped out. 
Gangs of venturesome Chinamen still avail themselves 
of every opportunity for plunder. They will make 
a daring raid on one side of the river, and will then 



MANCHURIA AFTER THE WAR 83 

slip over to the other side until the hue and cry 
has died down. The Japanese found it necessary to 
keep bodies of troops in some of the up-river towns 
last year, and even then they could not deal effectively 
with the bandits. Travel up the Yalu is made more 
difficult owing to the number of rapids. The river 
region was very little known, until careful Japanese 
surveying parties mapped it out. On my journey 
I took with me a map produced under the auspices 
of a leading English newspaper by a famous firm 
of cartographers, and published in 1 904 at half a 
guinea. I found that it was woefully out in many 
details, tributary streams being drawn in wrong 
directions, and towns being misplaced. This was 
not the fault of the cartographers. Accurate surveys 
had not up to that time been available. 

When I left Antung for the north, the Japanese 
military administration permitted me to travel over 
the new mountain railway to Moukden. The journey 
was of special interest, for I had marched over much 
of the same way with Kuroki's victorious army. 
The mountain railway takes exceedingly sharp rises, 
and its curves are of the shortest. It twines like 
a snake. Now you are running along a valley ; an 
hour later you find yourself on the top of a great 
range of hills, having travelled round and round a hill 
in the upward ascent. At some points there are four 
lines of rails at different levels on one hill-side. 
Progress on such a line is naturally very slow. I 
started from Antung between five and six o'clock 
on the one morning and reached halfway to Moukden 
about seven in the evening. My train set out again 
soon after five on the following morning, reaching its 



84 THE UNVEILED EAST 

destination at half-past six at night. This meant an 
average speed of less than seven miles an hour. 

The Antung-Moukden railway is not to be taken 
too seriously, for its locomotives cannot haul more 
than a very few tons of freight. Railway reformers 
will be interested to know that it strictly maintains 
class distinctions. There are first, second, and third 
class sections. The third-class passengers sit in open 
trucks. The first and second class have one narrow 
covered van between them, with wooden seats running 
longways. The first and second classes are divided by 
a bit of string fastened across the centre of the car. 

When I took my place on the train in the morning 
a young Japanese in uniform came and sat by me. 
He informed me in hesitating English that the colonel 
commanding the railways had sent him to accompany 
and help me along. That young man never let me 
out of his sight for a single minute until I settled in 
Moukden. On the first night, when we stopped half- 
way and slept in an empty Japanese house, I was given 
one room and he the next. About two in the morning 
I got up, went outside and looked at the valley below, 
lit up by the moonlight. As I gazed at the impressive 
scenery, a voice called my name. I glanced round, 
and saw the officer standing by my side, fully dressed. 
He had resolved that no harm should happen to me 
while I was in his charge. 

The country along the line of the mountain railway 
showed at many points houses and villages destroyed. 
There were block-houses for the Japanese soldiers at 
intervals of every few miles — usually square compounds 
with dwelling-houses on one side and stables and a 
cook-shop on the other. The white walls and general 



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Mpk 






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MANCHURIA AFTER THE WAR 85 

air of cleanliness of these Japanese military stations 
was very refreshing after the untidiness of the Chinese 
homes. In most of the Chinese villages one found 
Japanese men and girls. Thriving crops of kiaoliang 
and maize in the valleys between the hills showed that 
the peasantry were already recovering from the effects 
of the war and military occupation. One found 
frequent traces of the great armies that had been 
there not many months before. Every station had 
a Russian military boiler outside it, with a fire under- 
neath, giving a constant supply of hot water. Great 
stacks of fodder and provisions could be seen at the 
main stations, supplies left behind by the army and 
waiting to be taken down to the coast. 

I was glad to reach Moukden. To be cooped up 
for two days in very hot weather in a crowded and 
comfortless baby railway carriage is not the most 
delightful experience at the best of times. To me 
it was especially trying just then, for I had been poisoned 
by some organic matter in the Antung drinking-water, 
and was more fit for a hospital than travel. I found 
a Japanese hotel where I was accommodated for ten 
yen (£1) a day. Next morning I went out to explore 
the city, and fell into the kindly hands of Mr. Turley, 
of the British and Foreign Bible Society. But for his 
care, Moukden would probably have been my permanent 
resting-place. 

Eight years ago Moukden was nothing but a name 
to the outside world. A few missionaries lived there 
and occasionally an adventurous traveller saw and 
described its great walls and massive tombs. Since 
1900 the city has been a centre of world drama. 
Russia opened it to the west by the Siberian railway ; 



86 THE UNVEILED EAST 

it was an important point in the Boxer rising ; it 
was a field for diplomatic struggle over the growth 
of Russian influence in Manchuria, and in the early 
days of 1906 it was the scene of the greatest battle 
in the history of the world. To-day it is one of the 
points where China and Japan are silently and politely 
contesting for the ownership of the province in the 
north. 

The railway station is no longer the luxurious 
place it was under the Russian administration. The 
broad-gauge, well-fitted cars of the old time have 
made room for narrow and uncomfortable coaches. 
In place of the old Russian buffet, with its hundred- 
and-one European luxuries, you now obtain food 
from filthy Chinese and Japanese coolies who peddle 
apples, hard-boiled eggs, dough-cakes, and Ashai 
beer. 

The great road between the station and the town, 
over three miles long, has sentry-boxes freely dis- 
tributed on it, at intervals of every hundred or two 
hundred yards. In each sentry-box is a Chinese 
policeman, armed with rifle and bayonet. The con- 
stables look very workmanlike and imposing, until 
you examine them more closely. One police-inspector 
complained to me that his men's weapons were so 
bad and of such old pattern that it took them live 
minutes to fire one shot. " If six of my constables 
came upon one robber," he said, " the robber would 
be able to ride off to safety before one of the police 
could load and pull his trigger." 

One little reform meets you on entering the city. 
A notice at the gateways warns you that you are no 
longer permitted to drive on any side of the archways 



MANCHURIA AFTER THE WAR 87 

that you like. Even pedestrians must leave through 
the city gates to the left and come in by the right — 
a rule which, owing to the immense size of the gates, 
sometimes gives one a quarter of a mile farther to 
walk than in olden times. 

Reform has started in the yamen of the Tartar 
Governor-General himself. The Peking Government, 
realising that it must do something if it is to keep 
Manchuria for itself, has sent several of the keenest 
and brightest of its younger officials here. The Tartar- 
General had last summer as his adviser in foreign affairs 
Mr. M. T. Liang, certainly one of the most capable 
of the younger Cantonese who are rising into power. 
Liang was formerly a railway official, and worked his 
way up to a directorship of the railways. He speaks 
English with the utmost fluency, and although he 
has never visited England he is in intimate touch 
with all our affairs. His son is in one of the great 
English public schools. 

Two years ago, streets of houses around the Tartar- 
General's yamen were all occupied by dignified and 
obese officials of State, who effectually put the skid 
on the wheels of progress. There were many Boards. 
The Board of Rites, with its mandarins and secretaries 
and high officials and runners, moved in an unvarying 
round ; the Board of Dignities, with an equal 
host of officials, daily did its momentous work ; 
others, whose very names are now forgotten, faith- 
fully fulfilled the tasks of the Circumlocution Office. 
To-day they have all vanished. A small body of 
smart secretaries does the work, under the immediate 
direction of the Viceroy. There is no time for red 
tape. Some officials are planning the macadamising of 



88 THE UNVEILED EAST 

the main roads ; others are arranging for the repair of 
the city walls ; still others are promoting the success 
of schools, or social institutions, or clubs for the free 
discussion of national affairs. The one message dinned 
into the ears of the rich merchants of Moukden is, 
" Wake up for the sake of China ! " 

Mr. Hagiwara, the very able Consul-General of 
Japan, who has a group of offices outside the city 
wall, must be mentioned. He is one of the younger 
generation of Japanese statesmen, is intensely ambitious 
for his country, and conveys the impression underneath 
his winning exterior of being the man who would not 
allow trifles to stand in his way. I first met him in 
Korea before the outbreak of the Russian War, where 
Mr. Hayashi and he were playing the game against 
M. Pavloff, the Russian Minister, with consummate 
skill. For the next two years, whenever any specially 
strong advance in Japanese demands was made in 
Korea, Hagiwara's influence could be felt. On the 
November day in 1905 when the surrender of 
Korean independence was extorted from the trembling 
Emperor and Ministers at Seoul, Hagiwara showed 
the iron hand most plainly. When the Korean Prime 
Minister refused to yield to entreaties or threats, and 
tried to approach his Emperor's chamber, it was 
Hagiwara who gripped hold of him, flung him into 
a room, kept him there, and allowed the impression to 
sink into his fellow Ministers' minds that Han Kew Sul 
had been murdered, and that they also would be slain 
if they did not give way. 

Personally, Mr. Hagiwara is one of the most 
winning men in the Far East. But, despite his 
personal charm, the Chinese are not blind to the 



MANCHURIA AFTER THE WAR 89 

significance of his leaving the chief secretaryship of 
a legation to accept a consul-generalship. " Hayashi 
and Hagiwara took her independence away from 
Korea," they say. " To-day Hayashi is Minister 
in Peking, and Hagiwara is head of the Japanese 
in Manchuria. Have they been sent to do the same 
work here ? " 

Students with ambitions to be officials are being 
shaken out of their national placidity. At a recent 
Civil Service Examination the usual papers on Chinese 
classics were given and finished. Then the Tartar- 
General paid a visit to the examination halls. " To- 
morrow," he said, " I will set a final paper, which 
you must all answer. It will be on the progress of 
Western science." Most of the students had no 
ideas whatever about Western science. They found 
out that there were some Western men in the city, 
missionaries, so they made a rush for them, cleared 
out the educational books in the missionary shops, 
and started to cram up Western learning in a 
night. 

I have called Moukden the city of tears. To me 
it is so because of the tragedies to white men and 
women there. Shortly before 1 900, groups of Russian 
officials and their wives came down and settled in 
Moukden. When the Boxers arose a number of 
the Russian men and ladies were seized and horribly 
tortured. One of the most beautiful of the Russian 
women was said long afterwards to be still concealed 
in the home of an unknown mandarin, where she 
had been hurried into captivity. The Roman Catholics 
at that time gathered their converts and priests and 
nuns in their cathedral, and attempted an active 



9 o THE UNVEILED EAST 

defence. The Chinese brought up artillery, and 
slaughtered every one. The Presbyterian missionaries 
had a very successful work in Moukden. They were 
obliged to flee the city in varied disguises ; some 
perished, and many of their converts died under 
torture. When all was over they refused to demand 
punishment for their enemies, and declined all com- 
pensation save a ridiculously small sum for their 
burned-out hospitals and homes. To-day they are 
hard at work again. 

From then till now Moukden has been a tragic 
city for the white race. Here was writ in the sky, 
in the bitter March days of 1905, for all the world 
to read, that the influence of the West is on the wane, 
at least for the time, in the Orient. Here Oku, 
with his twenty-five thousand heroes — having left 
twenty thousand dead or wounded behind — paused 
triumphantly while Kuropatkin and his broken and 
dispirited army retreated before him. 



CHAPTER VII 

JAPANESE IMMIGRANTS AND CHINESE 
ROBBERS 



91 



CHAPTER YII 

JAPANESE IMMIGRANTS AND CHINESE 
ROBBERS 

IN Antung, in Moukden, and in many other parts 
I heard constant and detailed complaints of the 
conduct of the Japanese immigrants. Large numbers 
of these are people of the very lowest class. This 
is admitted by the Japanese themselves, and is some- 
times raised by them as an excuse for their conduct. 
Quacks, gambling-house keepers, and women of ill- 
fame have settled in the new territory literally by 
the thousand. In Moukden they were especially 
prominent. One could not go through the streets 
of the city in the evening without noticing the well-lit 
and open-doored Japanese houses waiting for their prey. 
Sometimes the keepers would be standing without, call- 
ing aloud to the Chinese passers-by for custom. The 
Japanese gambling-dens were all over the city. The 
Chinese authorities had no power to deal with these pests, 
and the Japanese officials winked at their presence. 

Quite apart from questions of morality, I could not 
understand why an alert and clever people like the 
Japanese do not realise that in thus allowing open 
trade in their own flesh and blood as the victims of a 
subordinate people, they are striking a serious blow at 
their national prestige. The effect on Chinese opinion 
of the presence of the lawless Japanese is exceedingly 
93 



94 THE UNVEILED EAST 

bad. cc What are we to think: of a nation that will 
shamelessly sell its daughters to other people ? " 
respectable Chinese asked. cc The Japanese profess 
to come to teach us reform and a higher civilisation. 
And then they bring us that ! " An expressive gesture 
would point to the brothel-keepers and their victims. 

The Chinese had expected very different things. 
The Japanese won golden opinions from the common 
people in the war of 1894-5. When the Japanese 
armies advanced over Southern Manchuria the cowering 
natives anticipated outrage, torture, and death. But 
the Japanese, while behaving with great severity even 
to the wounded on the battle-fields, treated the ordinary 
inhabitants with marked fairness. The massacre at Port 
Arthur was the exception which proved the rule. The 
people in Manchuria found in 1895 tnat tne Japanese 
conquerors gave them the best government they had ever 
had. They looked for the same in 1905. But to-day 
the Japanese are hated in Manchuria only a degree 
less than in Korea. There are several reasons for this. 
The Japanese troops during the recent campaign dealt 
with merciless rigour with all persons suspected of 
having aided the Russians in any way. Chinamen 
were shot on the barest suspicion. The military police 
were frequently given a free hand, and their tender 
mercies were very cruel. At Liaoyang, for instance, 
they at one time suspected the inhabitants of sending 
information to the Russians. An open box was put in 
a public place for anonymous informers against spies. 
In two cases which I verified the police behaved with 
fiendish cruelty. They took one boy of about eleven, 
and half roasted him in front of a fire, to make him 
confess where his father was. They laid hold of a 




Photograph 



CHINESE PRISONER AND JAPANESE JAILOR, 
CHANGFU, MANCHURIA, SEPT., I906. 



JAPANESE IMMIGRANTS 95 

woman and bade her tell where her husband had gone. 
The woman did not know and so could not tell. 
They stripped her, and beat her about the breasts and 
on the body until they drove her mad. 

I heard many such tales. In another case I was 
showing a foreign-trained doctor a portrait of a man 
who had been handed over by Japanese soldiers to a 
Korean jailor and had been badly tortured. The doctor 
looked at the pustular arms, and nodded his head. 

" His arms are gangrened," he said. " The ropes that 
the soldiers tied him up with cut right into the flesh." 

u Yes," I replied, " but how can you tell that?" 

" I had a very similar case under my care," the doctor 
replied. c ' A Japanese railway man employed a number 
of Chinese coolies on construction work. He tried to 
cheat the coolies out of their wages. One of them 
went up to him and protested. The railway man and 
a gendarme took him and bound him up so tightly 
that the ropes cut into the flesh of his arms around the 
elbows. Gangrene supervened. When the victim was 
released he came to me. But 1 could do little, and 
both arms had to be cut ofF." 

I print opposite this page a photo taken by myself at 
Chan-Chung-fu in September last. A Chinese coolie is 
shown there tightly tied up so that he could not move 
a limb, and with his head held aloft by his pig-tail 
being fastened to the upper beam. He was lashed 
securely against a heavy, sloping beam, and was left out 
in the very hot sun to frizzle. This was a compara- 
tively mild case. In Manchuria the less responsible 
Japanese are in some cases carrying out the same plans 
they are using in Korea, methods of sheer terrorism. 

At Moukden the one common subject of conversation 



96 THE UNVEILED EAST 

was the Hung-hutzes, the bandits. Each afternoon 
one would see little parties of Chinese cavalry riding 
outside the city into the country. If you inquired 
where they were going, you would be told that they 
were searching for Hung-hutzes. The people pointed 
with confidence to the earthen wall encircling the suburbs 
of the city. No Hung-hutzes, they would declare, could 
get up it, and so a raid on the city was impossible. 

Farmers and traders who arrived from the interior 
were bitter in their complaints that the Hung-hutzes 
were ceasing to carry on their business in a legitimate 
and decent manner. Every one recognised that the 
bandit who works according to established convention 
has his place in properly organised society just as the 
insurance agent, the lawyer, or the shopkeeper has 
his. Up to the outbreak of the Russo-Japanese War 
there were generally recognised rules of the game 
which the Manchurian bandits observed. It was a 
point of honour that they should never attack high 
officials, women, or children. It was understood that 
they were never actually to kill when they possibly 
could avoid it, unless the person had made himself 
very disagreeable to them ; it was further understood 
that a business man could protect himself from their 
attentions by paying a reasonable amount for burglary 
insurance to the bandit agents. So long as the bandits 
confined themselves to plundering the lines of carts 
carrying the goods of merchants no great harm was 
done. Merchants were rich and could easily make 
up for their loss. 

" But now," said the people to me indignantly, 
" the Hung-hutzes are carrying on in most outrageous 
fashion. They have better guns than ever before, for the 



JAPANESE IMMIGRANTS 97 

Russians and Japanese both employed and armed them 
during the war. They have lost all sense of proper 
behaviour, and they seem to delight in injuring high 
officials whenever they have the chance ! They show no 
moderation and no respect for any social obligations ! " 

It is only by travelling on horseback through the 
interior away from the towns that one really finds 
how grave this bandit problem is. In village after 
village between Liaoyang and Moukden I came across 
a strong central castle with great courtyards, high 
crenellated walls, heavy iron-shod gates, and loop- 
holes for riflemen and spearsmen. The inhabitants 
desert their houses and pour into these castles when- 
ever bandit armies approach. The bandits move in 
gangs of any number from twenty to several hundreds. 
They are splendidly mounted and are kept under 
thorough discipline by their chiefs. In most places 
they had up to the time of the beginning of the war 
a kind of understanding with the authorities. The 
bandit chief permitted a certain number of his weakest 
men to be captured each year, and these were duly 
tortured and executed — thus demonstrating the zeal 
and power of the mandarins. The latter, on the other 
hand, rarely attacked the leaders of the bandits unless 
forced to do so by pressure from Peking, and in turn 
themselves were let alone. 

A friend of my own was travelling around the Kirin 
district when the local authorities insisted upon giving 
him an escort of two soldiers, miserably armed and 
badly mounted. The traveller knew that there was 
a band of a hundred and fifty bandits roaming over 
the province, and he wondered what good two soldiers 
would be. So he spoke to his escort. 

7 



98 THE UNVEILED EAST 

" Supposing that we met the bandits, what could 
you do ? You are not strong enough to fight them. , ' 

" Of course we could not fight them," one of the 
soldiers replied. ' c We would not try to do so. We 
would go up to the bandit captain and tell him that 
you are under our charge. c If you rob or injure this 
man/ we would say, c we will be punished, and put 
to death. Now, you be our friend, and let him go 
unhurt. Some day, who knows ? you may want a 
friend. Misfortune may come to your band and you 
may be a prisoner. Stand by us now, and if dark 
days come to you we will stand by you.' The captain 
would know that I spoke truly/' the man concluded 
in simple fashion. " He would do you no harm." 

At times there have been rulers of cities and provinces 
who refused to be bound by this understanding. There 
was such a governor in Kirin not many years ago, and 
he was reputed to capture and execute an average of 
no less than two thousand Hung-hutzes a year. Every 
attempt to compromise with him came to nothing. 
At last the governor, after many years of dignified 
power, retired and sent the entire amount of his savings 
in silver and silks and jewels to Peking by road. The 
procession of carts was heavily guarded by troops. 
The bandits all round united and organised their 
forces. They fell on the troops, fought them and 
drove them off, capturing the governor's entire savings. 
He was a ruined man, and in consideration of his great 
misfortune the Peking authorities allowed him to retain 
his governorship for a longer term. But during this 
second term the Hung-hutzes were left alone. The 
governor stated that it had been borne in on his mind 
that he must exercise mercy and gentleness to all. 



CHAPTER VIII 

FROM PORT ARTHUR TO HARBIN 



99 



CHAPTER VIII 

FROM PORT ARTHUR TO HARBIN 

1PITY the man who can stand upon the summit of 
203 metre hill at Port Arthur to-day without 
having his very soul racked by overwhelming and 
conflicting emotions. The ground around is already 
caving in, for the vast masses of the dead buried there 
are crumbling and turning to dust. Odd remnants of 
battle, milk tins made into bells, cartridges, bullets, and 
fused portions of high explosive shells and hand gren- 
ades, lie about. On every side is one vast panorama 
of mountains, their approaches marked by lines of 
shelter trenches, creeping towards the summits. The 
monster forts, and the strong hill positions, Shuishi 
and Itzeshan to one's right, and Siuchiatun away to 
the left, show in their mouldering sides the hell man 
endured on this spot. In the military museum in the 
town you can gaze at a pair of official photographs 
of the scene a-top of the hill immediately after 
the capture. The ghastly heaps of dead, wounded, 
and dying, the tremendous commingling of tortured 
humanity, the faces worked up to express culminating 
hate, aspiration, and endeavour, once seen can never 
be forgotten. The two Russian crosses on the hill-top 
tell their silent message : the winds, sweeping across 
the unbroken heavens, seem to waft around the linger- 
ing phantoms of the hundred thousand dead. 

I admit, let those laugh who will, that I visited 



102 THE UNVEILED EAST 

Port Arthur and Tairen with profound melancholy. 
It seemed to me as I went through street after street 
and fort after fort, and then travelled up the captured 
railway, that I had come to the great point where 
Eastern and Western civilisation met, and where 
Western civilisation had been rolled back. Port 
Arthur itself in the autumn of 1 906 was still a ruin. 
The buildings that had been in process of construction 
when the siege began were left untouched, with their 
scaffolding still around them. House after house, in 
the heart of the town, showed the effect of the shell 
fire. There were great holes in the walls, sides of 
buildings torn away, the corner of a hospital cut off, 
and ruin and desolation everywhere. At the mouth 
of the harbour the masts of the Japanese boats that 
had been bravely run in to block the exit way still stood 
up in the water. The Japanese authorities seem to 
have done very little to restore the place. Low tide 
shows the rusting frame of a beached and broken 
Russian destroyer. 

One thought inevitably of the days that are passed. 
What a life it was in Port Arthur in those old days, 
the days of four years ago ! Early coffee at eleven in 
the morning, breakfast at 4 p.m., dinner at any 
time between 11 p.m. and 3 a.m., and bed at any 
hour. Life seemed one endless round of champagne, 
of songs, of dances, of entertainments, and of gaiety. 
There was money for every man with influence ; con- 
tracts with great profits attached were to be had, posts 
were to be filled and perquisites were to be claimed. 
Why should the officer trouble about drill and discipline 
when there were ladies to entertain, wine to be drunk, 
and good fellowship to be emphasised ? The army of 



FROM PORT ARTHUR TO HARBIN 103 

parasites and hawks had gathered. There were the 
Jewish contractors, sleek, ingratiating, and hateful, 
making good fortunes, soon to be paid for by the 
blood of Russian peasants. There were the ladies of 
the half world, summoned from three continents — the 
daughter of California, graceful and with some rem- 
nants of modesty still left, side by side with the 
hardened and polished young woman of seventeen from 
Buda-Pest. There was Bettina ! Most of those 
who worshipped her now lie in the mouldering earth 
around, but some are still left who mutter of her 
glories when in their cups at night-time on Siberian 
steppes or in Caucasian fort. Bettina was the queen 
of all. Her life was a wonder ; and as she minced on 
her diamond-strewn way, now mistress of a governor, 
now auctioning herself night by night to the highest 
bidder, the little world around looked and wondered. 
Then came the guns — no play salute this ! Where 
are they all now ? The gay young officer is dust, the 
contractor is already in the hell that comes to all 
who sell their souls for gold, and Bettina slinks down a 
side street in Shanghai, her diamonds vanished, herself 
a ruin. 

Tairen, the Dalny of old, is busy, and here an air of 
retrogression is seen all around. One seems to have 
gone back to an earlier stage of civilisation. The men 
who occupy the fine Russian houses do not know how 
to use them ; the comforts and amenities of civilisation, 
as we understand them, are being destroyed, simply 
because the Japanese traders and soldiers cannot com- 
prehend them. One turns away with a sharp pang 
from a little Russian chapel, nicely decorated, now used 
as a loafing-place for Chinese coolies. A new Japanese 



io 4 THE UNVEILED EAST 

town is already building up here, and the great station 
is full of trucks for goods. 

The railway northwards was once a marvel of 
comfort. Its broad-gauge trains, its sleepers and 
dining-cars, its music-rooms and its luxury, were the 
wonder of the East. All that has gone. The Japanese 
have changed the gauge, making it narrower, and have 
put on it some of the worst and dirtiest rolling stock 
I have ever met, in a fairly wide experience. The 
cars are foul beyond description. The trains are 
crowded with Japanese merchants and adventurers 
travelling towards the interior. Among the many 
merits of the Japanese, the capacity to handle a railway 
to the best advantage is not one. In September the 
railway was only open as far as Chang-fu, and it took 
thirty-six hours to cover a little under four hundred 
miles. The accommodation was primitive, and food 
supply was a problem. In place of the old Russian 
buffets, you now obtained eatables of wonderful variety 
from frowsy Chinese and Japanese coolies. 

Under the Treaty of Portsmouth, the Japanese took 
over the whole of the Siberian railway up to Chang- 
chung-fu, and they have the power to build a line 
covering the short distance between their terminus 
and Kirin. This affords them access to the great 
markets of Central Manchuria. The Russians retain 
in their hands the three sections, from Manchuria to 
Harbin, 585 miles, from Harbin to Pogranichnaya, 
on the Vladivostock side, 339 miles, and from Harbin 
southwards to Chang-chung-fu, 147 miles. From a 
commercial point of view, the Japanese have secured 
for themselves the vital part. Commanding, as they 
do, Chang-chung-fu and Kirin, they will be able to 



FROM PORT ARTHUR TO HARBIN 105 

cover Manchuria and Mongolia with their manufactures, 
from the most convenient distributing centres. 

I endeavoured, in travelling through the country, 
to obtain some light upon the situation in the rival 
Russian and Japanese forces at the time immediately 
before the conclusion of peace. Very little has so 
far been permitted to leak out about what was going 
on then. The system of censorship and the blinding 
of correspondents and attaches was carried to a greater 
point of perfection by the Japanese after their experience 
in the stormy days of 1 904 ; and in the summer of 
1905 the foreigners attached to the armies were 
allowed to see nothing of any consequence. They 
were carefully prevented from intercommunicating and 
comparing notes, and they were kept in Manchurian 
villages under such conditions that they learned little 
more than if they had been at home. I have gathered 
up the experiences of my colleagues with the different 
armies during the idle summer after the battle of 
Moukden, and on certain points there is remarkable 
agreement. The Japanese in striking their great blow 
practically exhausted their strength. After the battle 
of Moukden they simply rested and waited, holding 
the line of country, starting to the west of Chang-fu 
in Mongolia, and sweeping down in the direction 
of Chiu-kia-Chang, not far from the Korean frontier. 
They showed marked apathy in pushing on and 
completing their reconstruction of the captured rail- 
way line north of Moukden. They made no serious 
attempts to cut off Vladivostock, evidently recognising 
that it was impossible for a nation, however brave, 
to have two Port Arthur sieges in one war. The 
reinforcements which arrived in 1905 were not of 



106 THE UNVEILED EAST 

the same class as the men who had fought and won 
the great battles. Japan was clearly drawing upon 
her second lines of reserves. 

There was another factor, which was carefully kept 
from the knowledge of both attaches and correspondents. 
Details came to me at various points which all showed 
that the ravages of beri-beri among the Japanese 
forces were much more serious than has ever yet been 
permitted to transpire. When I was with the Japanese 
forces in 1904 there was some trouble from this 
disease, and the medical authorities were seeking by 
every means in their power to combat it. Evidently 
beri-beri claimed many more victims in the final summer. 
Friends of my own, themselves enthusiastic advocates 
of the Japanese cause, spent part of 1905 on the 
line of route where all the Japanese sick and wounded 
from one army had to be carried down, and where 
they came in touch with them. They assure me that 
the men passing through their village, stricken fatally 
with beri-beri, in this one army alone — I cannot mention 
its name, as it would be inconvenient to give a clue 
to my informants — could not have amounted to less 
than a thousand. At Moukden and elsewhere all 
that I could learn went to support this statement. 
If this applied also to other armies, it would help 
to explain the quiescence of the main Japanese forces 
from the latter part of March until August. During 
that time, it will be remembered, the Japanese troops 
did not strike a single blow of real weight. The 
seizure of Saghalien was of course of no account, 
strategical, however important it was politically. The 
mere fact that the Japanese have not officially admitted 
such heavy loss from beri-beri means nothing. From 



FROM PORT ARTHUR TO HARBIN 107 

the military point of view they would be justified in 
never confirming it. 

But if the Japanese were apathetic and fever-stricken 
during that summer, the Russians were in even worse 
case. On the east side, at least, a feeling of absolute des- 
pair seemed to have come over most of their men. They 
had lost confidence in their cause and in their leaders. 
The Russian authorities continued to send forward 
reinforcements, particularly of artillery, but they never 
succeeded in instilling discipline, order, and obedience 
into their ranks. General Linievitch proved his ability in 
masking his positions from the Japanese. In the battles 
up to Moukden, the Japanese knew the Russian posi- 
tions and strength better than the Russians themselves. 
After Linievitch took control, this was no longer so. 

The Russian forces at the front during the summer 
of 1905 were not so considerable as has sometimes 
been supposed. There has been vague talk of a 
million men on the fighting field. When I en- 
deavoured to obtain more exact details, I found myself 
for some time baffled. However, I am now able to 
present what I have the best reason to believe is a pre- 
cise statement of the total Russian armies in the Far 
East at the time of the conclusion of peace. 

Infantry. 

648 battalions of about 750 men, say . 480,000 
Cavalry. 

230 squadrons or sotnias of about 100 

men, say ...... 20,000 

A rtillery. 

1,820 guns of different calibre, and 374 

Maxims, say 30,000 

Engineers. 

Commissariat, etc., 34 battalions, say . 20,000 

Total, about 550,000 



io8 THE UNVEILED EAST 

These figures include all the troops in the Far East, 
those in Vladivostock and other places, as well as those 
available for the field army. There were between 
350,000 and 400,000 men ready to meet the Japanese 
in battle — nearly double the number engaged in the 
battle of Moukden. 

After the battle of Moukden the following re- 
inforcements were sent to the seat of war : 

Infantry . . 130 battalions (plus 60 battalions to 
be incorporated in the existing 
regiments as a fourth battalion). 

Cavalry . . 24 squadrons. 

Artillery . 596 guns and 334 Maxims (that is, 
nearly the whole of the 
Maxims were sent out after 
the battle of Moukden). 

Engineers, etc. 12 battalions. 

All the facts that I was able to gather have left on 

o 

my mind the conviction that the Treaty of Ports- 
mouth did remarkable justice to both sides. The 
Japanese gained much, as they deserved to, but they 
gained quite all they deserved. They had struck their 
blow — a splendid blow ! — but they had reached a stage 
approaching perilously near to exhaustion. They 
might possibly have won another pitched battle, but 
that would have brought them no closer to the 
position where they could strike at the real heart of 
Russia. They were nearing the limit of their borrow- 
ing powers. The great wave of European and 
American emotional sympathy had almost exhausted 
itself ; and they had lost so many of their fully 
trained officers, and so many of their best men that 
they were no longer so efficient a fighting force as 
before. Vladivostock still faced them, and the siege 



FROM PORT ARTHUR TO HARBIN 109 

of Vladivostock would be even more formidable 
than that of Port Arthur. They had won what they 
began the war for, and they might well be content. 
The revolutionary movement in Russia had failed to 
do what they hoped. The gushing and foolish talk 
in Europe and America, when the peace was concluded, 
of the magnanimity of the Mikado and his advisers in 
consenting to peace, was nothing but ill-informed 
nonsense. They took all they could get, and rightly 
so. They would have been traitors to their own 
imperial ambitions had they done less. 

The exhaustion of the Japanese at the time of the 
declaration of peace is now virtually admitted by 
themselves. The Japan Times, which speaks with 
authority, used this admission as an argument for 
increased military and naval expenditure. " When 
one remembers how dangerously near the point of 
exhaustion the country was when the Portsmouth 
treaty of peace was concluded, it will not be the cynic 
alone who would sound a warning against the folly 
of basing our security on the honeyed words of praise 
lavished on us." (Jan. 26, 1907.) 

The Russians, on the other hand, knew that at 
the best they could only hold their own. There 
was no hope for them to regain lost ground. Their 
navy was gone, their prestige was dimmed, and their 
empire shaken. For what ? For a plan of expansion 
to the East, about which the mass of their people 
cared nothing. They had again demonstrated their 
courage, which no man doubted. They were in a 
bad place, and they knew it. 

To return to my journey. I travelled by rail to 
Chang-fu, and there the regular service stopped. 



no THE UNVEILED EAST 

There was still a section to cover, about 120 miles, 
before I could reach the Russian lines. The Japanese 
at Port Arthur had warned me that the country was 
very unsafe, on account of the brigands. At Chang-fu 
I found the people talking of little else. I started 
in the afternoon for a walk in the country. Some 
young Chinamen at once came running after me and 
begged me to turn back, on account of the bands of 
Hung-hutzes scouring the country. Next morning, 
when I started out in the construction train that was 
to take me over the first twenty-seven miles of the 
broken way, I found an escort of three Japanese 
soldiers awaiting me, with rifle magazines filled and 
bayonets fixed. They were there as my guard. 

The whole country, from Tiding northwards to 
Suppinje, was desolate from the war. It seemed as 
though the Russian troops in retreating had destroyed 
everything. The bridges were all blown up, every 
house was burned, and the railway stations were 
wrecked. But the Japanese were steadily settling 
down in the forsaken country. All along the line 
I saw little colonies of Japanese traders and Japanese 
military railway guards. At one town, north of 
Chang-fu, the Japanese told me that there were no 
less than five hundred of their countrymen. 

After leaving the construction train, I had to 
traverse part of the road on foot, having my goods 
carried by Chinese cart. I arrived at a little military 
post, where I found a young Japanese official who 
wanted to discuss Tolstoy with me, and to talk of 
the folly of war. He had hoped that by a year 
of exile in Manchuria, he could save enough to come 
to England. The young man afterwards wrote to 



FROM PORT ARTHUR TO HARBIN in 

me, begging to know if I could tell him of any 
plan by which his desire could be realised. I quote 
part of his letter to show the hopes going through 
the minds of some of the younger Japanese. Possibly 
his prayer may come to the notice of those who can 
give him the opportunity he desires. 

A young of Japan sends a letter to the gentleman 
of England, 

My dear Sir, Mr. McKenzie, 

Did you arrive safety London ? 

I am thanking that I could not treat you with 
completely matter when you came here from corea 
past-day. 

Now, please kindly give me the liberty to write 
my desire. 

Dear sir, I am just twenty-three years old. happily 
or rather unhappily when I was born my home was 
not rich, and I became a work man after had passed 
the third class of middle school. 

After that time many transformations came often 
on my public and private fortune. Therefore I indeed 
could not received the high education in my past. 

Now sir, I earnety hope to go England to get 
the good knowledge of English law from the higher- 
spirited proffessor in your country. But unhappily I 
am poor of money to spend for travelling, and no 
one dose not care for my desire at present. 

Before coming to Manchuria I thougt that I would 
make the money to spend for going further country 
step by step, but after spending new life in this state 
my expectation was not same to the fact. Sir ! What 
shall I do ? this is my daily question. 



ii2 THE UNVEILED EAST 

If I would arrive to your country I shall become 
a table-boy or mark man of rich man's garden or 
other worker which may be possible for myself to 
get the money for living of course I always determind 
to go third class of steamer. 
Now sir ! 

May it possible or not ? if you kindly have the 
simpathy for the abovementioned wishes I will become 
a very happy young and can see the light in future 
of my life. I would return Tokio at once to get 
the passport from the Foreign department by my 
father's care 

and start soon. 
Now sir I am afraid these are not independently 
please pardon me, sir 

Oh England ! 
thats my paradise. 
How many I think of it day and night. 
Mr. McKenzie now hopping to read your kind letter 
in near future 

please give me simpathy for poor young 
Yours respectfully 



After two year I must be 25 years old perhaps 
it will be late in time to get success while my parrents 
are living I want to see them as a successful man. 



At Suppinje I found the railway partly restored, and 
I continued my journey from there on a push cart, 
run along the rails by gangs of coolies. The Colonel 
at Chang-fu had telephoned ahead that I was to be 
helped through as quickly as possible, and his assistants 



FROM PORT ARTHUR TO HARBIN 113 

along the line of route showed me every possible 
kindness. That evening, as we were speeding along, 
near sunset, a party of Hung-hutzes came into view. 
They were splendidly mounted, some of the men 
having second horses, which they led. The robbers 
saw the soldiers with me, and moved off. 

When I started out again at nine in the evening, 
I found that a more elaborate escort had been provided. 
ci If you are killed," said the Japanese officer simply, 
"I will have to suicide myself." He had determined 
that I should not be killed. One cart ran ahead, with 
three or four soldiers on it, while behind me sat three 
soldiers more. It was two in the morning before we 
reached the half-way house. We had covered about 
seventy miles that day. 

Next morning I had a surprise. As I left my room 
at seven in the morning, to hasten my start, another 
white man came out of the opposite door. He was 
Captain von Pustau, of the Imperial German Navy, 
who had been visiting the Far East as a correspondent 
for the Berlin Local-Anzeiger. It did not take us 
long to become acquainted, and I have reason to thank 
the good fortune that gave me his comradeship for the 
remainder of the journey. 

We were soon off again, the officers of the little 
Japanese garrison coming to bid us farewell. All 
that day we hurried on, tiring out several groups of 
coolies. We were met at point after point by the 
Japanese officers stationed at the block-houses. To 
them, in their isolation, the passing of fresh faces was 
an event, more particularly as we were among the first 
who had come through along the Port Arthur-Harbin 
line since the investment of the Russian fortress at the 



ii 4 THE UNVEILED EAST 

beginning of the war. Our difficulty was to avoid 
the kindly hospitality of the soldiers. They constantly 
told us that we ought not to try to go further, but 
should spend the whole night with them. We had 
to stop at one place for a midday meal. Word had 
gone ahead, and the officers were waiting. My com- 
panion explained that we could not delay for more 
than ten minutes. But course after course had been 
conjured up in that barren spot, and it was an hour 
and twenty minutes before we were able to leave. The 
Japanese officers politely declared that it was of no use 
for us to attempt to hurry ; they had sent our coolies 
away, and they could obtain no more for at least an hour ! 

During the last stage of our journey through the 
Japanese lines we were guarded like valuable and 
brittle china. A Japanese frontier officer came down 
to meet us ; we had infantry in front and behind us, 
and mounted gendarmes were sent ahead to explore 
each valley and wood. The officer explained to us, 
with much detail, that there had been many deaths 
from the Hung-hutzes there, and he was not going to 
permit us to be added to the roll. The houses showed 
how seriously the brigands are regarded here. Near 
each station was a fortified barracks, built by the 
Russians during their occupation, with high walls, iron- 
shod gates, loop holes, and high inspection tower. The 
houses placed outside these walls had their sides carefully 
banked up, like earthworks. " Sometimes the robbers 
come and fire shots into our houses at night time," 
said the officer. " If we did not make thick earthen 
ramparts around, we would be killed." 

It was nearing sunset when we approached the 
Russian lines. A group of sentinels in their white 



FROM PORT ARTHUR TO HARBIN 115 

smock coats stood at the barrier. We gave the 
familiar greeting " Zdrvastvouitie," and they saluted 
as we rode by. 

Now we were to realise the contrast between the 
Russian and the Japanese administrations. The 
Japanese were doing their detail work perfectly. Their 
barracks were clean and in order, and their officers and 
men alike knew all that was going on around. On 
the Russian side we were stopped at the block-house, 
and told that we must wait there until word had 
come from Chang-Chung-fu, two miles away. We 
sent urgent telephone messages into the town, but 
they never reached the chief officers. " The officer 
in charge will be out in an hour," came the reply. 
We lay on the bare board of the block-house and slept 
until morning. When I woke I found that my hand 
was badly swollen with the bites of the poisonous 
insects that abounded. 

Still no officer. A few rough and good-humoured 
Cossacks were wandering about. I went out to the 
well in the field, and tried to pull up a bucket or two 
of water, to throw over myself as a morning refresher. 
The bucket was so full of holes that barely a quart 
would reach the surface. This was typical ! Finally, 
we announced that we were going on, whether the 
guardian of the block-house allowed it or not. The 
telephone bell rang more vigorously than ever, and by 
eleven o'clock we were under way, with a mounted 
Cossack guard following us. 

At Chang-Chung-fu there was the same confusion. 
We found the officers of the staff there in rooms 
stocked with ill-arranged and confused documents, pre- 
paring for evacuation. They had not even been told 



n6 THE UNVEILED EAST 

of our arrival at the frontier. Personally they were 
charming and kindly men ; but when one contrasted 
their easy ways with the order, determination, and 
thoroughness of their rivals, one wondered what hope 
there is for their cause in the Far East. 

Chang-Chung-fu is a city of broad streets, modern 
Chinese buildings, and immense warehouses. The 
hongs of some of the merchants are measured by the 
thousand yards. The Chinese traders made immense 
sums out of the Russian administration during the war. 
This town is the most important trading centre between 
Harbin and Moukden. To me it will always be 
remembered as the most dusty city I have ever been 
in. The fine dust must have been a foot thick 
on the roadways. You could not walk a step without 
raising columns of it ; while at every movement of your 
cart you were enveloped in clouds. 

We had the choice of travelling from Chang-Chung- 
fu by the day train, in first-class carriages, or of going 
in a third-class train at night. We chose the latter to 
avoid the delay. It was by no means uncomfortable. 
There was a wooden shelf on which one could sleep. 
Next morning found us in Harbin. 

As many people are interested in the reopened 
trans-Siberian route, it may be well for me to state 
here that it has greatly improved since I crossed it 
in September. The Japanese now have their railway 
completed as far as Chang-Chung-fu, there being only 
a short gap between the Russian and Japanese stations 
that can be covered by an hour's carriage ride. Leav- 
ing Tairen at six in the evening, it is nominally 
possible to reach Harbin at nine o'clock the second 
evening afterwards. The lines are still running badly 



FROM PORT ARTHUR TO HARBIN 117 

however, on account of the telegraph wires being 
broken in various places, and, when I last heard, 
the trains were about twenty-four hours late in com- 
pleting the trip. There are as yet no arrangements 
for goods traffic between the two places. 

Harbin I found overflowing with money and with 
prosperity. Compared with the great days of the war, 
when two operas, six theatres, and a hundred circuses 
and music-halls were in full blast, it may have seemed 
dull. But I had not known it then, so, coming from 
the stagnation of the interior, it struck me as full of 
life. War prices continued unchecked. A filthy room 
in the best Russian hotel on the official side of the 
town cost me 135. a night without food, and I paid 
between ys. and 10s. for a Russian bath. A mechanic 
demanded £2 14J. for repairing a broken spring in 
my typewriter, more than ten times the proper price. 
Large numbers of miners could be seen driving in the 
town, all apparently with good money to spend. 

What I saw bore out the genuineness of the de- 
termination of the Russians to evacuate Manchuria. 
There were not, at the time I passed through, more 
than 50,000 of their soldiers in the province, including 
1 8,000 railway guards. Various high Russian officials, 
with whom I discussed matters, expressed their sincere 
wish to be away. " The place has been a curse to 
us," they said. " It has cost us untold millions ; it 
has crippled our strength, and it has benefited no 
one save Jewish contractors." 

There is no question but that the mass of the people 
in Manchuria prefer the Russian to the Japanese 
administration. The Russians spend much money, and 
interfere very little with local affairs. The Russian 



n8 THE UNVEILED EAST 

soldier is exceedingly kindly to the natives — in spite 
of popular impressions in England to the contrary — 
and gets on well with them. The Chinese have 
already various sayings comparing the two nations. 
" The Russians came and boxed our ears with one 
hand," they say. " But with the other they gave us 
many roubles. The Japanese came and boxed our ears 
just the same, but with the other they filch our dollars 
away from us." " We have driven out the bear, but 
now the tiger has come in and made a home in the old 
bear's cave," is another saying. 

To me, the most painful thing in Russian Manchuria 
was the record of military corruption dinned into my 
ears at every place. The people made no secret of it. 
Men boasted of their success in making fortunes out of 
the war funds. One soldier, who served as chief cook 
and purchaser of supplies to his regiment, claimed to 
have made 60,000 roubles (about ^6,400). " I bought 
cattle for 35 roubles each," he said. " They were 
charged in the accounts at 100 roubles. Being only a 
common soldier, I could keep no more than ten roubles 
for myself. The colonel kept 25 roubles, and the 
remaining 30 went among others. I bought other 
things in the same way." 

Business men admitted that but for wholesale 
bribery they could have got nothing through on the 
railway during the war. One notorious station-master 
removed military stores from three hundred cars, and 
sent forward the supplies of private merchants. He 
received 500 roubles (£54) a car. He implicated so 
many higher officials that, when a military board in- 
quired into his case, he had to be promoted instead of 
punished, to save a scandal. 



CHAPTER IX 

JAPAN'S COMMERCIAL CAMPAIGN 



119 



CHAPTER IX 

JAPAN'S COMMERCIAL CAMPAIGN 

THE first sight that meets the eye of the traveller 
as he approaches shore at Nagasaki is an army 
of stunted girls and women, grimed with coal-dust, 
crouching in barges, waiting to load the liners with 
fuel. Kyoto, world-renowned as the training-ground 
of the romantic geisha, is making rapid strides as a 
weaving and general manufacturing centre. The road 
from Tokyo to Nikko — perhaps the most beautiful 
holiday resort on earth — is now marked at many of the 
fairest spots by factory chimneys. When you travel 
to see a great waterfall, your mind full of ancient 
stories of daimios and clansmen, you will possibly find 
that an electric plant is being built there. The shores 
of the Straits of Shimonoseki, where a generation ago 
feudalism battled with Western civilisation, are to-day 
black with coal-wharves and the smoke of mills and 
furnaces. 

All over the land, the old, peaceful, romantic life is 
passing away, swept on one side by the whir and rush 
of factory, furnace, foundry, and bleaching-house. 
The dainty mousme can no longer stay at home prac- 
tising elaborate courtesy. The factory whistle calls her 
at six in the morning with its threatening shriek. The 
grounds of the Shogun's old castle are now covered 
with offices and intersected by electric tramways. 



122 THE UNVEILED EAST 

Yesterday Japan was the world's fairy-land ; to-day 
Japan would fain be the world's workshop. She has 
set out to make herself the paramount commercial 
power of the East, and she is rapidly succeeding in her 
purpose. Month by month her imports of foreign 
manufactured goods are decreasing and her exports 
rising. The year 1906 alone showed an increase 
of about twenty per cent, in exports of manufactured 
goods, and of twenty-six per cent, in half-manufactured 
goods, with a decrease of about twenty-four per cent, 
in the imports of foreign manufactures. Japan is on 
her way to become paramount in shipping, ship- 
building, and general manufacturing on the Western 
Pacific. 

The three chief commercial nations of the world — 
England, Germany, and America — have all owed their 
industrial progress mainly to individual initiative and 
energy. In Germany we see the splendid activities of 
the merchant aided and supplemented by Government co- 
operation ; in America we have individual energy work- 
ing almost unchecked ; in England we have individualism 
in commerce hampered by State inefficiency. In our 
commercial advances the individual has been everything 
and the State nothing. Japan has gone on different 
lines. There the individual trader is the minor factor ; 
the real creating and driving power has been the 
Government. The Government starts industries, finds 
markets, provides capital, trains workers, and guides 
and assists in every stage of business, from first to 
last. 

The Japanese are not a commercial people, and their 
character does not readily lend itself to systematic 
industry. They lack the supreme qualities that make 



JAPAN'S COMMERCIAL CAMPAIGN 123 

great merchants. For centuries the trader was despised 
as the lowest and most contemptible of men, one who 
would take personal profit out of the needs of others. 
When the makers of New Japan realised that imperial 
greatness was impossible without national commerce, 
they had to create a new class of merchant, and to 
break down the traditions of many generations. The 
imperial family gave its patronage to business. The 
Crown Prince became associated with the Standard Oil 
Trust, and the sons of nobles studied in the workshops 
of the West. The State took over several great in- 
dustries and monopolised them. Other highways of 
commerce, notably banking and shipping, are now 
largely State-controlled. The Government pours out 
money in wholesale fashion to foster young industries, 
and it buys from home manufacturers wherever possible, 
even though it has to pay higher prices than from 
abroad. The word has gone forth that every Japanese 
is to prove his loyalty by patronising home industries. 

The main advantages possessed by Japan in the 
coming struggle for trade are, apart from exclusive 
political privileges, cheap labour, cheap fuel, abundant 
water-power, carefully trained leadership, alliance for 
export, and strong Government backing. We can 
see already what Japan has accomplished with these 
advantages. For some time we smiled with easy 
tolerance at the efforts of these people to create a great 
cotton industry. Last year the go-downs of Shanghai 
were crammed with English and American piece-goods, 
seeking a market, while the Japanese mills were work- 
ing day and night to meet their orders. The Japanese 
Imperial Navy that won the Russian War was built 
mainly in England. To-day Japan is not only building 



i2 4 THE UNVEILED EAST 

the new additions to her fleet in her own yards, but 
she is securing orders from other lands. Up to quite 
recently Japanese ship-building was confined to small 
craft. To-day merchant vessels of 13,000 tons are on 
the stocks, and the purchases of foreign ships have 
dwindled almost to nothing. Japan is now building 
merchantmen for India and China. At Bombay and 
Han-kow, at Newchwang and Hong-Kong, the Japanese 
shipowner is competing with our own. Twenty years 
ago Japanese exports were valued at less than a million ; 
last year they amounted to over forty-two millions, an 
increase of ten millions on the previous year. Of these 
no less than thirty-five millions were of manufactured 
or half-manufactured goods. 

The first difficulty that confronted the Japanese 
Government in promoting commercial expansion was 
the lack of honesty of the Japanese trader. Much has 
been made of this by many writers, and it is un- 
doubtedly true that the Japanese merchant bears the 
worst reputation of any business man on the Pacific. 
He does not realise that a contract is made to be kept, 
even though he may lose money on it. He is an 
adept in what Lacfadio Hearn described as " little 
tricky plans which cannot be brought under law pro- 
vision, or even defined so as to appear to justify resent- 
ment — tricks at which the Japanese are as elaborately 
ingenious as they are in matters of etiquette and forms 
of other kinds." 

All this is true enough, but it is not the whole 
truth. There are working in Japan to-day great firms 
with as honourable a record as their European com- 
petitors. The number of reliable merchants is on the 
increase. The Government in its commercial schools 



JAPAN'S COMMERCIAL CAMPAIGN 125 

is doing its utmost to inculcate the necessity for com- 
mercial straightforwardness. The trickery of to-day 
is a passing feature due to old traditions. A much 
more serious factor against Japanese industry is the 
steady increase in the cost of living and the rise of 
wages there. On the most moderate estimate the 
cost of living has doubled within the past ten years- 
Wages have gone up steadily. Thus in the cotton 
trade, the average daily wage of the female worker 
in 1892 was i\d. ; in 1897 it was 3 J*/. ; to-day it is 
over $d. At the same time the average daily wage of 
the man operative has risen from ^\d. to %d. Taxa- 
tion has become a crushing burden. Each year the 
cost of the Government grows. Before Japan entered 
on her campaign of imperial expansion, the annual 
expenditure of the Government ranged from six to 
eight millions a year. Even as late as 1893 the total 
expenditure was only ,£7,800,000. By 1900 this had 
risen to ^29,000,000 ; last year it was £49,000,000, 
and for 1907 the grand total is ^61,000,000. In 
order to raise this money the Government has had to 
take over various lines of business and work them at 
a profit, and further, has had to tax to the last degree 
everything taxable. A local economist sought to prove 
last summer that half the income of people goes in 
direct and indirect taxation. That is a gross exaggera- 
tion, but the possibility of such over-statement shows 
the weight of the burden. Your tramway ticket is 
taxed, the sauce on your table is taxed, and everything 
between. 

War came not as a curse, but as a blessing to com- 
mercial Japan. Here is a land desperately poor, if 
poverty is judged by money. Industry was hampered 



126 THE UNVEILED EAST 

at every turn by lack of capital and by lack of demand. 
Foreign investors refused to lend to any extent, owing 
to the restrictions the native law placed on them. It 
would have been as hard to float a Japanese industrial 
loan on the London market before the war as it would 
be to raise money for Polish cotton mills to-day. 

Then came the triumphs of 1904, and the purse- 
strings of the world were suddenly loosed. Money 
poured into Japan by the scores of millions. Even 
those portions of the Japanese loans originally sub- 
scribed in Tokyo were very largely transferred abroad 
in a short time. Suddenly the new Japanese manu- 
facturers, who had been struggling to live, found 
themselves called on to work night and day to meet 
Government orders. Wages went up, and foreign 
money paid them. Eighty-five per cent, of the cost 
of the war was met by loans, and an appreciable 
proportion of those loans was spent in Japan itself. 

Even when the war was over, the glamour of Japan 
continued. Last year many large English and American 
capitalists went in person or sent their representatives, 
seeking investments. Most of them, it is true, retired 
in disgust when they realised the limitations imposed 
upon foreign enterprise and capital here. But sufficient 
foreign capital arrived to enable the boom to continue. 

This rush of foreign money is now over. The 
financial king of Cornhill or of Wall Street naturally 
desires to have some control over the undertakings he 
puts his capital in, and to secure most of the profit for 
himself. Japan has protected herself against him. The 
foreigner can with care obtain a fixed and respectable 
six per cent., or, if he is willing to take great risks, he 
can have more. But he cannot even hold shares in 



JAPAN'S COMMERCIAL CAMPAIGN 127 

the most profitable enterprises, such as shipping com- 
panies, or railways, or mines. He has to place himself 
at the mercy of his Japanese associates in various ways. 
A boom in speculative commerce has been growing and 
growing, during the past year, until it has now reached 
the point where it is a serious national danger. A 
fever of gambling has passed over the country. A 
new standard of existence is at the same time being 
established in the great towns, and people are living on 
a scale unheard of before. The poor clerk wants 
foreign clothes for his children, if he cannot afford to 
give them to his wife. The shop assistant demands 
milk to drink, and no man could afford to buy milk 
for his family on the old scale of wages. New com- 
panies are being floated almost every hour. New 
electric schemes, new mills, fresh shipping-yards, and 
new banks are being talked of everywhere. The new 
businesses started since the close of the war have a 
capitalisation reckoned by the hundred millions, and that 
in a country where money is still very scarce. The 
shares of old companies have appreciated by fifty, 
eighty, and a hundred per cent. A race of merchant 
miliionaries has arisen. The trader of yesterday be- 
comes the baron of to-day, and takes his place among 
the nobles. " All the people are content to trouble 
themselves about nowadays," said Count Okuma, the 
John Morley of Japan, recently, "is the so-called in- 
auguration of new companies, speculation in shares, 
horse-racing, lotteries, restaurants, tea-houses, and what 
not." A new class of young men is coming to the 
front, men who have escaped military service by 
trickery or malingering, and whose one ambition is to 
be rich. 



128 THE UNVEILED EAST 

Wages in Japan, despite recent rises, are still 
absurdly low. Young people often receive no pay for 
several years. The woman who works at home con- 
siders herself lucky if she makes 6s. 6d. a month, while 
the woman in the factory earns about §d. a day. A 
shilling to fifteenpence a day is considered good for a 
skilled workman, and one employer known to me has 
the pick of the market, because he pays his mechanics 
at the amazing rate of one yen (is.) a day. The 
policeman starts with 245. a month (not long since the 
pay was i6j-.), and in time he may rise to 10s. a week. 
Yet he cannot be bribed by a foreigner, and woe to 
you if you offer him a yen or two when he has done 
you a service ! A clerk in a Government office will start 
at 305. a month. The judge begins on £$0 a year. 

Five years ago, low salaries in Japan did not involve 
acute distress. It was once the boast of Tokyo that 
it had no real slums. Each year this is becoming less 
and less true. There is still more sordid misery in 
Poplar or Canning Town than in the entire Japanese 
capital. But Tokyo is gradually acquiring its slum 
problem, like European cities. I have been down 
streets there where the familiar type of the peaked- 
faced child and the gaunt, over-worked woman could 
be seen in house after house. Yet the Japanese capital 
has nothing to show to compare with the filth and 
horror of our night crowds of homeless on the Thames 
Embankment. Even the policeman on six shillings 
a week manages to maintain a family in decency. 
Tokyo is helped by two things. The liability to 
earthquakes prevents the construction of tenement 
houses, and the drink habit has not yet penetrated 
to any extent among the women of the poor. The 



JAPAN'S COMMERCIAL CAMPAIGN 129 

problem of alcholism is one that will weigh heavily 
upon Japan within a generation. There are many- 
signs that intemperance is increasing and is taking more 
virulent forms. But the working women have so far 
escaped it. 

The boom must pass, but the real advance of industry 
will remain. The progress of Japanese commerce has 
nothing to do with the speculative fever. It is based 
upon the solid accomplishments of a number of picked 
men, sent abroad during the past twenty years by 
the Government, who acquired Western commercial 
and manufacturing knowledge, and applied it. I visited 
the office of one such leader last summer, the son 
of a noble educated in America. He is the president 
of a great manufacturing concern, one of the largest 
and most prosperous in the land. There was no carpet 
on the floor, and absolutely not a single ornament 
in the room, save one stick of artificial cherry-blossom. 
The president, a bright-eyed, eager young man, sat 
before a large, flat, well-worn desk, with an array of 
telephones to his left. There was a sofa behind him, 
and a stand-up desk to the side. 

" You see no unnecessary ornament in this room, 
do you ? " he remarked briskly. " I have a sofa, but 
that is for me to sleep on when I stay here all night. 
Our works are open every day, and I am down at 
my office three hundred and sixty-five days a year. 
We have a saying in Japan that the leader of an 
enterprise should be the first to meet trouble, and the 
last to take pleasure. I come at eight in the morning 
and remain until about seven at night. This is longer 
hours than you have in England, isn't it ? But you 
have established yourselves, while we are making our 

9 



i 3 o THE UNVEILED EAST 

way. I consider it my business to know the work 
and doings of every superintendent and foreman here. 
We employ over six thousand men, you know. Every 
year we give our men a bonus, in addition to their 
wages. Each foreman decides the proportion of bonus 
to go to the men under him. But the amount 
given to each foreman and clerk and assistant is decided 
by me myself. If I did not know sufficient of what 
each of them was doing to decide this matter justly, I 
should think it time to resign." 

The dividends declared by the older established con- 
cerns show the margin of profit now to be made in 
Japan. Two spinning companies declare 40 per cent, 
dividends ; several of the leading banks pay from 10 
to 12 per cent. ; one railway pays 14 per cent, and 
the other 14*7, and a third 15 per cent. In the 
current list of a Kobe stockbroker, I note the last 
dividends paid on a group of companies shown there, 
20, 20, 15, 15, 12, 15,13-1, 17, 20, 20, and 15 per 
cent. 

Japanese commerce is still in its infancy, but it is a 
very lusty child. 



CHAPTER X 

MONOPOLY AT WORK 



131 



CHAPTER X 

MONOPOLY AT WORK 

ALONG and well-lighted room, filled with 
hundreds of girls, each sitting or standing over a 
machine or by a table. Some of them looked little 
more than babies, scarce big enough to be out of the 
nursery, while others showed prematurely aged faces. 
Attired in bright kimonos, with hair quaintly dressed, 
yellow-faced, slant-eyed, chattering and smiling, they 
embodied one result of Western influence upon the East. 

All were working at top speed, for piece-work rates 
rule, and it needs a long day to make a living wage. 
Poor dainty little Mademoiselles Chrysantheme — the 
age has gone past when Japan was content for her 
daughters to stay at home. The factory is your lot. 

The nimbleness of the workers, the speed with 
which their fingers moved, the unceasing buzz of the 
machines, and the vigilance of the European-dressed 
supervisors, seemed all unlike English conceptions 
of the Japanese. Here was one lassie sticking bits 
of wadding into the ends of cigarettes. Her hands 
flew so deftly that one could scarce follow them. 
Why was she plugging the end of each paper cylinder 
in this fashion ? I asked. I was told that she was 
busy producing a line of cigarettes made of tobacco 
dust, and that unless special precautions were taken 
they would all go to pieces ; so the paper at the top 
133 



i 3 4 THE UNVEILED EAST 

was crimped by machinery, and girls stuck wadding 
on the end of each mouthpiece. 

The factory over which I was going was one of 
the most modern and up-to-date in Japan. It is 
owned and operated by the Government itself, the 
tobacco trade being a Government monopoly. I had 
here in front of me an illustration of the most striking 
industrial departure Japan has yet initiated, a de- 
parture likely to be copied by other Governments. 
State monopolies are no new thing. We are familiar 
with them in Europe, from the match monopoly in 
France to the alcohol monopoly in Switzerland. 
Generally speaking, European experience has been that 
the exclusive manufacture of any article by the State 
means that the consumers pay more and have worse 
quality than when the trade is privately controlled. 
I was curious to see if Japan would succeed where 
others had so conspicuously failed. 

The Japanese Tobacco Monopoly is the fruit of the 
genius of the Department of Finance, one of the most 
brilliantly managed sections of the Japanese Govern- 
ment. The authorities found themselves hard driven 
for money. In spite of constant increase of taxation, 
not enough was secured to meet the ever- rising 
subsidies and official outlays. Then the Department 
of Finance elaborated the idea of establishing trade 
monopolies, worked by the authorities for direct profit. 
Japan was driven to State socialism by economic 
necessity. Salt, tobacco, camphor, and railways have 
thus been taken over, and the method will doubtless 
be extended to other industries. Attempts have also 
been made to monopolise the match trade, but so far 
without success, 



MONOPOLY AT WORK 135 

The Japanese are essentially a nation of smokers. 
The Japanese man consumes innumerable cigarettes, 
and even the Japanese lady has a dainty pipe or little 
paper and tobacco roll. For some time the tobacco 
trade was largely in the hands of a branch of the 
American Tobacco Company, and several up-to-date 
factories on a large scale were in working order. In 
1876 a tobacco tax was imposed, and in 1898, in 
order to raise funds to meet the increased military 
expenses since the China War, the Government 
instituted a monopoly for leaf tobacco. This monopoly 
soon yielded five times as much revenue as the old 
duty, and the Government then determined to extend 
this system so as to include not merely tobacco leaf, 
but the manufacture of prepared tobacco. 

In 1904 the more complete monopoly came into 
operation, the entire trade then being taken over by 
the Government. The old owners were given com- 
pensation amounting to 20 per cent, of their sales, 
with an additional allowance equal to one-sixth more 
if their buildings and plant were not purchased. The 
total sum granted under this was not, however, to 
exceed ^910,000. A number of Europeans and 
Americans who had been engaged in the business 
were dismissed, their places being taken by Japanese. 
The large foreign firms were well able to look after 
themselves, but there was some grumbling among 
the smaller ones. Naturally all felt aggrieved that 
after establishing an industry, as they had done, the 
Government should come in and take it from them. 

Since 1904 the Monopoly has been worked on 
aggressively national lines. The policy throughout 
has been to employ only Japanese, save where a 



136 THE UNVEILED EAST 

foreigner is indispensable, and to use, as far as 
possible, Japanese machinery. One special branch 
factory was quickly established at Fushimi to deal with 
machinery of all kinds, and the new appliances in the 
factories are more and more of Japanese make. A 
small quantity of foreign-grown tobacco has to be 
used for certain brands, such as the " Orient " cigarettes ; 
but this is kept to a minimum, and the home-grown 
weed is solely used for most of the output. Home 
growers of tobacco are compelled to sell their crops to 
the Monopoly ; and if they do not agree to the prices 
fixed by the Monopoly agents, special arbitrators are 
appointed. Foreign-manufactured tobacco is excluded 
from Japan by a duty of 250 per cent. 

The primary purpose of the Monopoly is not 
philanthropy, but, as I said before, profit. The wages 
of the workers have been kept about the same as under 
private management. The officials claim, however, 
that they have improved the lot of the factory hands 
in several ways. The Monopoly can secure regularity 
of output. It knows how much will be wanted, 
for each coming year, and can run its plants accordingly, 
avoiding both rush-work and slack times. Very 
young child labour has been somewhat lessened, and 
home work has been strictly supervised. But the 
Monopoly does not profess to be a concern for social 
amelioration. The rate of wages is, generally speaking, 
very low, and the money that can be earned by the 
wives and daughters of policemen and petty officials who 
do out-work tasks is barely sufficient to support them. 

Very real economy has been effected in cost of 
distribution. Rival selling agents can now be dis- 
pensed with. When there is only one seller, buyers 



MONOPOLY AT WORK 137 

naturally have to come to him in place of being run 
after. 

The Monopoly began v/ith cigarettes, and then went 
on to cut tobacco. For some time it has been im- 
possible to produce sufficient in the factories to meet 
the popular demand, and consequently very much 
work has had to be done outside. The price of 
cigarettes has increased by about 20 per cent, since the 
Monopoly took the control ; but as this is part of a 
common rise in cost in Japan, little can be said about 
it. Even with this increase, the most expensive 
ordinary variety of cigarettes, the " Star," costs a penny 
three-farthings for a box of ten, while the cheapest, the 
" Yamazakura," costs five farthings for twenty, retail. 
Japanese cigarettes, like Russian, consist mostly of 
cardboard mouthpieces with a little tobacco at one 
end. Cut tobacco ranges in price from one shilling 
to half a crown a pound, and cigars from five shillings 
to twenty-four shillings a hundred. 

The authorities are insistent on the high quality of 
their wares, and make great claims, especially in foreign 
markets, about the purity and excellence ensured by 
Government ownership. Frankly, I cannot see any 
grounds for these claims or any reason for believing 
that the Government proprietorial rights ensure a 
better or purer article. If my eyes did not deceive 
me when I went over the factory, methods of flavour- 
ing and of the utilisation of stalks and waste are 
adopted that can only be justified on the grounds of 
a very cheap, low-priced trade. There is a danger 
here, of course, that one may judge Oriental quality 
by Western taste. From the standpoint of the English 
smoker the Japanese Monopoly tobacco is bad. If I 



138 THE UNVEILED EAST 

were condemned to smoke it or nothing, I would join 
the Anti-Nicotine League to-morrow. I have not 
tried the Monopoly cigars, for after handling them 
I declined to make the attempt. I lacked courage. 
But my own taste or the taste of the average English 
resident in Japan counts for practically nothing here. 
The trade is not made to meet our desires, but the 
demand of the people of the country, and what is to 
us execrable may to them be the balm of Araby. I 
tried to gather the views of average Japanese smokers 
of all classes about the effect of the Monopoly on 
quality. I found a general agreement that the quality 
has deteriorated. " We must smoke whatever they 
turn out," many Japanese told me, u and so naturally 
they are not very particular about what they give us." 

This view of the decline of quality is borne out by 
the varying sales of Japanese tobacco abroad. Not 
satisfied with expelling foreign manufactures from 
Japan, the Government started to attack them in 
other lands. The British-American Tobacco Company, 
when turned out of Japan, established large factories 
at Shanghai, and built up a very considerable Chinese 
trade. The Japanese Government threw all the weight 
of its political influence in the Chinese, Korean, and 
Manchurian markets in a fight against them. Selling 
agents for the Japanese goods were appointed all over 
the Far East, in Australia, Siam, the Straits Settlements, 
Hong-Kong, and the Philippines. In China, in par- 
ticular, districts were allotted out to Japanese whole- 
salers, and these were left to employ their own devices 
for fostering trade. Consignments were sent even to 
Scandinavia, and the Monopoly has for some time 
been considering the possibility of supplying England, 



MONOPOLY AT WORK 139 

It is no secret that the European manufacturers 
consider themselves seriously aggrieved by this external 
competition of the Japanese Government. They 
complain that the Government does not play the 
game. For instance, the agents of the Monopoly who 
go through China claim the status of Government 
representatives, while really they are nothing but 
commercial travellers. In Manchuria, every advan- 
tage has been given to the Monopoly officials and 
every possible check been put upon the private 
firms. In Korea, wholesale smuggling of Japanese 
Monopoly tobacco has been allowed. Some of the 
Monopoly agents in China have not hesitated to stir 
up anti-foreign sentiment among the natives. I 
have seen broadsheets issued in China to promote 
the sale of Japanese tobacco. These, it is only fair 
to say, are published by the local agents and not 
from the central offices in Japan. Some of them 
are so abominable and scurrilous that it is impossible 
even distantly to describe them in a book intended for 
common reading. They touch the lowest depths. 

One comparatively innocent circular can be quoted. 
It is from Hanlow, and is headed, " Hasten to read 
this, patriotic gentlemen ! " It is an appeal to boycott 
American cigarettes and buy Japanese. " Americans 
are composed of wicked minds, poisonous as acid," 
it asserts. cc They have told the British that they sell 
cigarettes in order to injure Chinese and ruin their 
lives. To ask for one of their cigarettes is to ask 
for the death of a Chinese. If you do this, your heart 
is as fierce as a wolf. Are you not afraid that the 
thunder will strike you ? " 

The final paragraph of this poster reveals its source 



i 4 o THE UNVEILED EAST 

of origin. " Should you wish to smoke cigarettes, 
smoke the Dragon or Phoenix brands, manufactured 
by the Japanese Government Tobacco Bureau, whose 
agents are the Mitsui Bussan Kaisha." 

Where, as was the case in Manchuria, the Monopoly 
agents could keep back the foreign goods, they had 
for the time a great success. The exports went up 
considerably, rising from ^56,696 in the last six 
months of 1904, to £3 14,5 13 for the whole of 1905, an 
increase of not far short of from three to one. In 
China the trade increased fourfold. During 1906, 
however, the European and American manufacturers 
began steadily to win back their own again. The 
Japanese exports to China were reduced more than 
50 per cent., and they fell even in Korea. For the 
first ten months of 1905, the value of Japanese 
cigarettes exported to all countries was £233,976. 
For ten months in 1906 the exports only amounted 
to ,£149,448. 

There can be no question about the success of the 
Monopoly from a financial point of view. It has 
yielded the State a profit far in excess of estimates. 
In the first year alone the actual net profit was 
£ 2 il 50,000. This has since risen. In the home 
market the tobacco monopoly will, of course, carry 
everything before it. Abroad, however, it must either 
improve the quality of its wares or obtain special 
political concessions if it is to hold its own. The 
foreign manufacturers working from Shanghai can 
command better tobacco, equally cheap labour, and 
equal shipping facilities. Given a fair field, there 
is not very much question as to which will win the 
day. 



CHAPTER XI 

THE JAPANESE COTTON TRADE 



141 



CHAPTER XI 

THE JAPANESE COTTON TRADE 

I STOOD in the main street of Osaka and gazed 
around. Was this Japan ? 

A murky river, with muddy and malodorous water, 
and carrying many ugly lighters, bordered one side 
of the road. The skyline was marked by giant 
factory chimneys, each belching forth its thick black 
smoke. The rising steam of bleaching-sheds filled the 
air. Long, ugly go-downs could be seen in all direc- 
tions. The wooden houses — in other parts the daintiest 
and prettiest-looking of homes — here seemed consumed 
with grime. The air, heavy, damp, and gloomy, might 
have been that of Manchester on a November day. 

A party of women passed by. Where were now 
the dainty daughters of Japan ? These were tired, 
for factory hours are long in Osaka. Their clothes, 
shabby and sad-coloured, matched their prematurely 
aged faces. There were children among them, little 
girls of nine and ten, who had been all day at work 
in the mills, like their elders. 

Japan is realising her ambition, and this was part 
of the outcome. 

Cotton is king in the Far East. The Asiatic textile 

trade is one of the most important sections of our 

exports. An open and awakened Far East, buying 

its higher-class cotton goods from us — no sensible 

143 



i 4 4 THE UNVEILED EAST 

man expects to retain its cheaper business — will mean 
prosperity for England in the coming generation. Let 
that market slip from us, and Lancashire will be hard hit. 

For some time it seemed that Japan could never 
be our serious rival in cotton manufacture. Her 
people, while good hand-workers, are on the whole 
indifferent with machines. Capital costs twice as much 
in Japan as in England. The country does not grow 
its own cotton. The Japanese for long failed to display 
any capacity for fine work. Their output was cheap 
but poor ; and even when all the mills were running 
to their utmost capacity, it was very small in amount. 

But the events of the past year have somewhat 
shaken our feeling of security. The Japanese are 
greatly increasing their output, and are turning out 
a higher grade of goods than ever before. They are 
underselling us, they have advantages in retailing their 
products which we lack, and they are rapidly forcing 
their way into our Chinese market. 

The Japanese spinning industry is still in its 
beginnings. All the mills together number only one 
and a third million spindles, one-twelfth of those in 
Oldham alone. The total of workers is sixty-three 
thousand, of whom fifty thousand are women and girls. 
The average daily wage is fivepence for a woman and 
eightpence halfpenny for a man. The operatives 
cannot be compared, in efficiency or nimbleness, with 
our own Lancashire hands. At the best, five Japanese 
are equal to two English. Mill managers, particularly 
around Osaka, complain bitterly that, owing to the 
custom of girls leaving the mills when they marry, 
extreme difficulty is found in maintaining a large body 
of expert workers. 



THE JAPANESE COTTON TRADE 145 

So much for the dark side. But these facts are 
modified by others. The output is greater than 
might be expected from the small number of spindles, 
because many of the mills work day and night, seven 
days a week. Most factories have two off days a 
month, but do not observe Sundays. Some Japanese 
industrial leaders are openly declaring that since they 
are fighting for outer markets now held by others, 
they ought to keep always at it, working every day, 
and they practise what they preach. The usual 
working hours are from six until six, with an hour 
and a half or two hours off for meals. 

The greater part of the cotton output is confined 
to coarse counts, the overwhelming proportion of the 
exported cottons being sixteen hand. But the pro- 
duction of much finer work is steadily increasing. 
This is specially seen in the home market. 

Japan learned its cotton business from us. Many 
of the mill managers studied their business in 
Lancashire, and they are practical, shrewd, unassuming 
men. They seem to have acquired the true Lancashire 
contempt for mere display. One often finds the 
managers of the biggest mills dressed in shabby 
European clothes, and immersed in detail work. 
They are workers of a type that builds up an industry, 
and they are not ashamed to look what they are. 

In equipment, the leading Japanese mills are equal 
to our own. In some cases, notably the great Osaka 
Cotton Company, the buildings are exact copies of 
Lancashire concerns. Lancashire-made machinery is 
universal. The name of Piatt may be seen in nearly 
every great establishment. American machinery plays 
a very small part here. 

10 



146 THE UNVEILED EAST 

The manager of one of the largest mills explained 
to me why Japan comes to us for equipment. 
"English machinery is very high in price," he said, 
" but it works well, and it does not easily get out 
of order. Some time ago we tried the experiment 
of laying down Japanese-made machinery. It cost 
much less, but we soon found that cheap machines 
can be the dearest in the end. Bobbins and rollers, 
for instance, are only half the price when Japanese- 
made, but they are only one-third of the quality. 
After a fair trial we turned out our Japanese 
machines, and have nothing but English now. We 
even import our odd parts from England." 

" But Japanese makers are bound to come up to 
the English standard in time ? " I suggested. 

" Perhaps, if they have good fortune, in a hundred 
years," the manager politely replied. " But 1 doubt 
it, even then." 

Up to recently, the most serious handicap for the 
Japanese mills was lack of capital. Practically every 
yen that could be obtained was sunk in buildings or 
machinery. Offers of 7, 8, and 9 per cent, failed 
to tempt outside money. This hindrance is being 
rapidly removed. Not only is foreign capital now 
available, but the Government is advancing money 
for export trade at 5 per cent., and the imperial 
family of Japan is investing large sums. The only 
obstacle to a great increase of spindles is the diffi- 
culty of obtaining sufficient new machinery at an 
early date. For some time the Japanese have been 
placing very large orders in Oldham for both spinning 
and weaving machinery for use in their country, and 
the expansion of the Japanese cotton industry, so soon 



THE JAPANESE COTTON TRADE 147 

as these orders can be completed, will be enormous. 
Nothing but the congestion of the Oldham machinery 
market with British orders has prevented this growth 
taking place earlier. It is impossible to calculate the 
expansion of this industry in the future by the number 
of spindles at work to-day. 

The Japanese are carrying the paternalism of their 
old clans into factory life. The factory manager is 
the chief of the clan, and is expected to look after 
his people. This sentiment is recognised by many of 
the larger companies, and is even encouraged by them. 
It is carried to its utmost extent at the Kanegafuchi 
cotton mills. The hands there are given virtual 
security of tenure, conditional on good behaviour. 
The workmen pay 3 per cent, of their wages to a 
sick and provident fund, and the company not only 
doubles this, but makes large additional grants. The 
sick are cared for, and the old given pensions. There 
is a hospital for those who cannot be nursed at home. 
Liberal compensation is paid for accidents. The 
women workers are assisted at child-birth — for this 
mill, unlike many in Japan, succeeds in retaining its 
women workers after marriage. Pretty and comfort- 
able little houses, electrically lit, can be had by the 
mill hands for under three shillings a month. Those 
who have been at work for over three years are allowed 
homes rent free on marriage. The idea of the owners 
is to attach their good workers to them, by affording 
them a feeling of security of employment, The 
system is extending to other mills besides Kanegafuchi, 
and promises to be one of the strong factors in the 
commercial advance of Japan. 

One of the least favourable features in the Japanese 



148 THE UNVEILED EAST 

mills is the child labour. The Japanese owners often 
give inquirers assurances that practically no children 
under twelve are employed. Personal investigation, 
however, shows that this is incorrect. Many of the 
children at work impress outsiders as being little more 
than infants, but it is difficult for a foreigner accurately 
to judge the age of a Japanese child. I found by in- 
dividual interrogation in some of the mills that children 
I saw at work were only nine or ten years old. An 
American inquirer, Mr. Henry George, junior, who 
visited the mills after myself, reports the same thing. 

"But the children," Mr. George writes, "it was to 
them that my thoughts had turned when I started to 
speak about the cotton-mills. The sight of them in 
these mills — mills that work day and night and seven 
days in the week, for of course Sunday is not recognised 
here in the industries — it was the sight of so many of 
them among the spindles that made me wonder how 
much benefit all this civilisation that Japan is now 
taking up will bring to them ? They were all sorts 
and sizes, both girls and boys. But the girls looked 
smaller and in some way appealed more to my sym- 
pathies. One or two of them looked scarcely more 
than babies, yet they were tending machines. They 
only momentarily stopped to stare at me, and then 
turned back to the twirling spools. 

" I had been informed that thirteen (twelve by our 
way of reckoning) was the lowest age of children 
working in these mills. I caught up one little body 
in my arms and asked the foreman her age. He 
questioned the child, who said she was nine (eight 
according to our computation). She really looked not 
more than six or seven, and there were many more 



THE JAPANESE COTTON TRADE 149 

like her standing down through the long aisles of 
roaring machinery." 

There are no factory laws limiting the labour of 
women and children in Japan to-day. Doubtless such 
laws will be passed before many years, for the Japanese 
Government will realise that industrial success is not 
worth while when obtained at the cost of the child 
life of the nation. Some of the factory-owners would 
themselves welcome it. 

There is no doubt but that in 191 1, when the 
Japanese recover complete tariff autonomy, they will 
shut out foreign cotton goods almost completely. 
Their home mills will by that time be in a position to 
supply the home demand. From the point of view of 
the white factory-owner the loss of the Japanese cotton- 
market is not so serious as the coming Japanese com- 
petition in other fields. The Japanese mills are 
seriously stretching out for foreign trade. In Northern 
China their yarns are carrying all before them. During 
last summer they had enormous advantages over rivals 
of other nations in sending goods to Manchuria, and 
they made free use of them, working day and night to 
meet their orders. Five of the leading mills around 
Osaka united for Manchurian trade, and the Japanese 
Government assisted them in various ways. They 
were given nominal rates for the carriage of their 
goods to Manchuria, the capital necessary for their 
venture was found under what was virtually a Govern- 
ment guarantee, and the leading business house in 
Japan, the Mitsui, became their selling and distributing 
agent. The Japanese newspapers announced that 
exports of at least twelve thousand bales a year were 
to be kept up, even though there was some loss, and 



150 THE UNVEILED EAST 

that the Mitsui Company was not only going to do its 
best to push sales, but would for the time give its 
services free of cost. 

Manchuria and China naturally form the great fields 
for Japanese exports. But a special effort is being 
made to conquer the Indian market also. The 
Government has brought over large numbers of 
patterns of material used by the Indian peoples, and 
has carefully distributed them where they will be most 
useful. The subsidised shipping trade to Calcutta is 
being increased, and a clever semi-political movement 
has been promoted for some months in parts of India 
to secure cordiality for Japan among the people, and 
therefore a sympathetic appreciation for Japanese goods. 

The Japanese hope, within the next few years, to 
acquire practically the whole Manchurian and the greater 
part of the North China cotton-market. To do this, 
they will have to multiply their existing output many 
times, but they have abundant labour for that. They 
base their expectations of victory on very solid grounds. 
They will have the cheapest possible freight, particu- 
larly if they succeed, as they are now trying to do, 
in driving some of the English shipping lines out of 
the Northern Pacific waters. Even when the lesser 
efficiency of Japanese mill-hands is allowed for, labour 
costs much less at Osaka than at Oldham. Already 
Japanese shirtings are under-selling American goods of 
apparently similar quality in Manchuria by about 30 
per cent. Cheapness here is bound to tell, and cheap- 
ness lies with the Japanese. Politically, Japan will 
have a great advantage in these parts, for Chinese 
boycotts so far have all been against Europeans and 
Americans, and never against Japanese. 



CHAPTER XII 

THE OPEN DOOR 



151 



CHAPTER XII 

THE OPEN DOOR 

AT the beginning of the Russian War, the Japanese 
Government announced that it had two main 
objects in view — the maintenance of the independence 
and territorial integrity of Korea, and the continuance 
of the " open door " for trade in the Far East. " We 
are not fighting our own battle alone/' Japanese pub- 
licists proclaimed, time after time. " We are fighting 
the battle of all civilisation, and we are working for 
the commercial benefit of all trading nations." 

The supposed maintenance of the independence of 
Korea turns out to mean in reality the absorption of 
Korea by Japan. This is now admitted, and the friends 
of Japan declare that that country has a perfect right to 
reward itself, by taking Korea, for the arduous labours 
and heavy outlays during the war. The fiction of the 
" open door " is still diplomatically maintained. In 
reality Japan has violated her solemn promises about the 
" open door " as much as about Korean independence. 

The story of what has happened in Korea best shows 
the results of Japanese dominance upon world commerce. 
The Hermit Kingdom has for too long been regarded 
as a negligible mercantile possibility. Here is a land 
more than half as large again as England and with a 
population of twelve millions. It is rich in unworked 
minerals ; it has several gold mines, large quantities of 
153 



154 THE UNVEILED EAST 

inferior coal, and immense iron-ore fields. The climate 
is as good as that of New England at its best. The 
trade is certainly small, but that is because the country 
is only partly opened up ; it is capable of great develop- 
ments. In Manchuria, trade multiplied fivefold in the 
ten years before the war. In Korea, trade increased 
nearly threefold in four years, and is still growing. An 
import trade of over three millions a year is not to be 
despised. 

When the Japanese acquired the supreme control of 
Korea in February, 1 904, they quickly revealed a desire 
to secure for themselves the whole of the national 
commerce. They particularly aimed at a monopoly of 
the unworked resources of Korea. The Seoul Govern- 
ment had entered into treaties with a number of Powers 
establishing the " open door," and trade was free to all 
nations on the same terms. 

Japan's first step was to secure a pledge from Korea 
that no concessions would be granted or contracts given 
to foreigners without her being first consulted. This 
was followed by a much bolder move. I have already 
described how a concession of all the forest fields and 
waste lands was demanded, for a Mr. Nagamori, a 
former Japanese official. One man, standing out 
against this Nagamori scheme, aroused the resentment 
of the Japanese. Dr. Allen, the American Minister in 
Seoul, was the doyen of the Diplomatic Body and a 
close friend of the Korean Emperor. He was one of 
America's ablest and best representatives in Asia, and 
he had done well for his countrymen in their fights for 
concessions. Dr. Allen was thought to be too strong 
and too independent to suit the Japanese. Influence 
against him was brought to bear directly on President 



THE OPEN DOOR 155 

Roosevelt. It was suggested that Dr. Allen was pro- 
Russian, and not a persona grata at Tokyo. Conse- 
quently the Minister was summarily dismissed, with 
rather less courtesy than one would show to a disgraced 
lackey. 

The Japanese soon came against another strong man, 
Mr. McLeavy Brown, of the Customs. Mr. McLeavy 
Brown had long been notably friendly to the Japanese, 
and he had in former years been regarded as a bulwark 
against the Russification of the land. But he was, 
above all things, a lover of fair dealing. In his Customs 
service he had never allowed national prejudices to 
guide him, and he did not propose to do so now. The 
Japanese determined to remove him. 

This was apparently a task of greater difficulty than 
the clearance of Dr. Allen. When the Russians 
tried to expel Mr. Brown, the British Government had 
backed him up with its fleet. But the Japanese suc- 
ceeded where the Russians had failed. Mr. Brown's 
position was made intolerable. A Japanese financial 
adviser, Mr. Megata, was given control of the spending 
of the Customs revenue, and the Commissioner found 
himself hemmed in. Finally, goaded by pin-pricks, 
and maybe desiring to bring matters to a crisis, 
Mr. Brown resigned. He possibly expected the British 
Government to support him. To the surprise of 
many, our Government did nothing, the resignation 
was eagerly accepted, a Japanese stepped into the office, 
and Mr. Brown left the country. Other foreigners in 
the Customs service left about the same time, and a 
number of Japanese were brought in. 

Charges of partiality now began to crop up against 
the Japanese administration of the Customs. It has 



156 THE UNVEILED EAST 

been repeatedly stated that they favour their own 
people, and definite cases can be quoted to support the 
charge. To give an instance which I personally 
verified, a doctor in the interior of Korea ordered 
two consignments of medicines about the same time, 
one from Japan and the other from America. When 
they arrived, the American goods were charged 7^ per 
cent, duty, and the Japanese 5 per cent. I mentioned 
this case to a Japanese Customs official and asked him 
for an explanation. He declared that probably it was a 
mistake. There were different duties in the Korean 
Customs for medicines used solely as medicines and 
those used partly as food, he told me, and local officials 
must have mistaken the medicines and thought they 
belonged to the food class. But one comes across so 
many "mistakes" of this kind that one gets rather 
tired of them. 

When I last travelled through the country a con- 
siderable amount of smuggling was going on from 
Japan. Goods, particularly cigarettes, were being intro- 
duced through Fusan as " railway supplies." This 
was an old trick of the Russians in Manchuria. At 
Sin-Wiju, Japanese goods were brought in freely 
without payment of duty. This has now been stopped 
by the establishment of a Custom-house. 

In Korea, mines have been the personal property 
of the Emperor and concessions were to be had only 
from him. The Japanese took the right of granting 
concessions from the Emperor and vested it in the 
Japanese Resident-General. From the point of view 
of the ordinary business man it would hardly seem 
satisfactory for England to agree that her leading 
commercial rival in this field should seize sole power 



THE OPEN DOOR 157 

to distribute, retain, or control all mines as she pleased, 
without a protest. But presumably such business 
considerations are below the attention of Governments. 
It is not to be wondered at that, being given unchecked 
power, Japan has preferred her own people. Japanese 
prospectors and engineers were allowed to go freely 
over the north surveying and inspecting the land. 
European and American engineers who attempted to 
travel northwards were hindered in every possible way. 
They were delayed as long as possible in Seoul. When 
they started for up-country they were threatened, and 
occasionally physically ill-treated. The Residency- 
General delayed allotting licences for some time, and 
made a great parade of the impartiality it would show 
when the day of allotment came. The final and 
inevitable result happened. Nearly all the concessions 
were given to Japanese prospectors or to their Korean 
dummies. Nothing else could have been expected. 

Under any circumstances, Japan must have acquired 
the lion's share of Korean trade. Owning the railway, 
having secured for her people the right of internal 
navigation in Korean waters, running the Customs, 
and distributing the contracts, she has an immense 
start of all others. Only one thing remains to be done 
to make the Japanese trade domination of Korea com- 
plete and final. That is the transference of Korea 
to the Japanese Customs Union. Some time ago 
I asked the Marquis Ito if any such step was contem- 
plated. He replied that he could not then answer the 
question, although no doubt there would have to be a 
revision of Korean taxation, in which the matter of 
Customs would be raised. 

This inclusion of Korea under the Japanese tariff 



158 THE UNVEILED EAST 

has been advocated by many Japanese newspapers, 
and has recently been discussed by the Japanese Parlia- 
ment. The difficulty in the way is that the step can 
only be taken with the consent of the Powers already 
in treaty relations with Korea. This consent will be 
difficult to secure. A more easy change, and one 
that will strike at parts of our trade, is the formation of 
Government monopolies in Korea on the line of the 
Japanese monopolies. A tobacco monopoly has already 
been proposed. Such a plan would be a means of 
injuring the successful rival of the Japanese monopolists, 
the British-America Tobacco Company. 

Three years ago the trade of Korea was open to 
every man. To-day the independent administrator of 
the Customs has gone, his place being taken by a 
Japanese ; concessions and contracts have been showered 
upon Japanese speculators by Japanese officials ; and 
foreign employes have been reduced in number to make 
room for Japanese agents. The Japanese have the 
power, and the great foreign nations are indifferent. 

Manchuria shows the same tendency. Four years 
ago this province promised to be one of the most 
hopeful new fields for British and American trade. 
The port of Newchwang — then almost wholly in the 
hands of British merchants — prospered greatly. 

We had a flourishing silk export business from 
Antung, and a large part of the shipping even from 
Liaotung Peninsula was done in British bottoms. 
There were many alarming reports that Russia intended 
to frame a hostile tariff against us in this province, but 
nothing happened. 

Then came the war, and for a time all the ordinary 
trade of Manchuria was interrupted. Both Japanese 



THE OPEN DOOR 159 

and Russians found it necessary to impose innumerable 
restraints upon commerce, as was inevitable. The end 
of the war saw the main commercial section of the 
Manchurian Railway in Japanese hands ; new railways, 
notably from Antung to Moukden, had been built and 
owned by Japanese ; it found all the ports in Japanese 
hands, even the Customs at Newchwang being con- 
trolled by the Japanese army. 

White merchants expected and demanded that, now 
war was over, facilities should be given to them to 
enter the country. These facilities were kept back 
from white men, month after month, although they 
were freely granted to private Japanese traders. The 
most favourable sections of land at the great ports 
were taken by force by the Japanese from the Chinese, 
and were allotted to Japanese merchants. 

Soon many complaints were heard. Here is a 
typical one. A well-known English firm at Chefoo 
has a big business in silk cocoons from Antung. In 
the autumn following the conclusion of peace the 
Japanese authorities demanded an export tax of a 
mace (about 3f^/.) a thousand cocoons before it would 
allow the goods to leave the port. As it takes two 
hundred thousand cocoons to make a bale of silk, 
this tax spelt ruin. The firm proceeded to ship out its 
goods despite the Japanese. It succeeded in remov- 
ing about thirty million cocoons, when the Japanese 
seized the remainder, about ten millions. They de- 
tained these until the water around Antung became 
frozen, and export was impossible that year. 

Such a case, and cases like it, may have been the 
mistakes of individual Japanese administrators. Two 
other lines of action, however, could not be thus 



160 THE UNVEILED EAST 

explained away. These are the long-maintained closing 
of Tairen to foreign shipping and the preference given 
to Japanese goods from Tairen on the railway over 
foreign goods from Newchwang. 

From the day Japan acquired control of Tairen in 
1904 no British or other foreign trading ship was 
permitted to use the port until last September. 
Japanese ships were freely allowed to enter immediately 
after the war. No British or foreign trader was allowed 
to settle at Tairen, although Japanese merchants freely 
settled. It is true that one British subject did manage 
to remain in the city during the summer of 1906, but 
he did so by a series of very elaborate and clever 
subterfuges. All facilities and encouragement were 
given to Japanese settlers, while the door was shut in 
the face of the foreigner. The natural result was that 
Japanese exports to Manchuria last year rose very 
largely, while the go-downs of Shanghai were stocked 
with the British goods that could not be delivered. 
The Japanese goods could enter Tairen free of duty ; 
British goods in British ships intended for Manchuria 
had to go to Newchwang, and to pay duty. 

It is sometimes denied that the Japanese gained 
much advantage by this means. They gained a year's 
start on their competitors and they succeeded in 
disposing of an appreciable quantity of goods. Thus 
one export firm alone, the Sanyei Kumiai, stated in 
June that it had sent 1,000 bales of cotton goods 
in May, and that it was prepared to ship 1,500 bales 
in June, 2,000 bales in July, 2,500 bales in August, 
and 3,000 bales in September. 

When questions were asked in Parliament last 
summer about the continued exclusion of British 



THE OPEN DOOR 161 

shipping from Tairen, it was officially stated that, 
although British steamers were not allowed in, the 
junk traffic had been reopened since the spring. The 
implication, of course, was that British goods could 
thus enter on equal terms with Japanese. The Foreign 
Office could not, perhaps, be expected to know that 
while goods coming in Japanese steamers paid no 
duty, goods coming in junks would already have 
paid full duty from the Chinese port whence they 
sailed. 

Japanese merchants early last year made no secret 
of the fact that they were securing a real advantage in 
Manchuria. The president of the Osaka Cotton 
Spinning Company stated publicly in June : " Japanese 
goods enjoy a further advantage. They are admitted 
duty free at Tairen, while American goods have to 
pay a duty of about eight shillings a bale at Newchwang. 
This privilege of the Japanese will be removed sooner 
or later." 

Tairen is now open to foreign shipping. The 
opening was delayed as long as possible, and the delay 
did its work in giving the Japanese trader the start. 
The obvious next step in Japanese policy is to 
use the ownership of the railway to help Tairen as 
against Newchwang. This is being done. When in 
Tairen last I found that the Japanese were dividing 
the railway into two zones, so far as rates were con- 
cerned. In the section where goods from Newchwang 
would go northwards, rates were from 60 to 100 
per cent, higher than over the southern section of 
the line, where the Tairen goods had to go. 

The manipulation of the railway, the acquisition of 
the best sites for the Japanese, and the long closing 



1 62 THE UNVEILED EAST 

of Tairen have combined to produce great uneasiness 
among British merchants in the Far East. Many 
of them believe, and what I have seen compels me 
to agree with them, that a Japanese domination of 
Northern China would spell ruin to British trade 
there. 



CHAPTER XIII 
THE PROBLEM OF THE EMIGRANT 



163 



CHAPTER XIII 

THE PROBLEM OF THE EMIGRANT 

A GENERATION ago the white nations around 
the Pacific were faced and aroused by the 
problem of the Chinese emigrant. So far back as 
1 87 1 a great agitation in California against the 
Mongolians culminated in an election when 54,638 
votes were cast against the Chinese and only 883 in 
their favour. America and Australia passed rigid laws 
limiting the incoming of the yellow man, and a racial 
bitterness was generated that can only be realised by 
those who have lived in those countries. 

To-day the problem of the moment is the incoming, 
not of the Chinese, but of the Japanese. The issue 
here is altogether graver. In the case of China, 
America and our colonies had to deal with an Oriental 
power unable to defend its subjects abroad ; with 
Japan we are faced by a nation whose capacity to 
maintain what it considers its rights is only equalled 
by its sensitiveness. When the people of California 
sought to repeat with the Japanese the agitation that 
had been so successful against the Chinese, they found 
themselves met by an angry and resolute Government. 
It was not for nothing that Viscount Hayashi 
threatened in the Japanese Parliament that if the 
American courts gave a decision unfavourable to the 
Japanese, " the anti-Japanese movement in California 
165 



1 66 THE UNVEILED EAST 

would be considered to represent the opinion of the 
whole of the United States." The Californian 
authorities, in raising the question of Japanese immigra- 
tion when they did, played directly into the hands 
of the Japanese Government. Nothing suited Japan 
better than to be able to force the situation. It has 
given her an opportunity of bargaining for an under- 
standing that will allow her a more free hand for her 
people in Manchuria, on condition that her coolies are 
excluded from America. 

The breach in California will almost certainly oe 
patched up. Japan has not the money at the present 
time to enable her to enter on a new war, and 
America has neither the ships nor the soldiers on the 
Pacific to permit her to defend Hawaii, to hold the 
Philippines, or to punish Japan. But the problem 
remains. America will strengthen her Pacific fleet, 
and add to her island fortifications. The Japanese 
people, limited in their eastward movement by their 
Government, will strengthen their forces for further 
advance. Before many years are over the whole issue 
will have to be faced again. Then America will be 
less unprepared than she was at the close of 1906. 

Japanese immigration to-day may be divided into 
three great classes. The first class is where the 
Japanese go to countries in which they find themselves 
in direct competition with white labour. It is here 
that trouble between the brown and the white man 
is most likely. In the second class the Japanese go 
as labourers for the whites in places where white 
labour is unsuitable. Here we have an arrangement 
that is on the whole agreeable to both parties, although 
it contains the germs of future trouble. In the third 



THE PROBLEM OF THE EMIGRANT 167 

class we have the Japanese going as conquerors and 
settling among inferior peoples. Each of these has to 
be considered by itself. 

It is necessary to remember, in dealing with this 
problem, that emigration from Japan is directed by the 
Government. No Japanese is allowed to leave his 
own country without a passport, and without pro- 
viding guarantors that he will return when called upon 
by the authorities. The usual time limit for such 
passports is three years. The Government decides 
each month how many people shall be allowed to go 
abroad and where they shall go, and the Government 
never leaves hold of them when they are abroad. 
Japanese people rarely, if ever, become the permanent 
subjects of another country. Sometimes, as in British 
Columbia, they naturalise themselves to obtain privi- 
leges or concessions, such as fishing licences, but they 
regard such naturalisation as a purely temporary matter. 
They marry among their own people. They are 
strong believers in maintaining the purity of their race, 
and their patriotism prevents them from amalgamation 
with other nations. Thus we have, with the Japanese 
even more than with the Chinese, a separate, un- 
solvable element in white communities. 

It is this that has helped to make the Japanese so 
unpopular as permanent residents among Caucasians. 
Every visitor to the Far East knows that in com- 
munity after community, from Singapore to Sydney on 
the one side, or to Shanghai on the other, the Japanese 
is feared, suspected, and disliked. No doubt this 
feeling is caused to some extent by his merits as well 
as by his defects. There always seems to be a veil 
of reserve between him and the white races. " East 



1 68 THE UNVEILED EAST 

is East and West is West," and the East is no less 
East because it puts on a frock coat and patent 
leather shoes. Among the Pacific communities, the 
Japanese is with them and yet not of them, and those 
who have lived closest among this race and would fain 
know them best, are obliged to admit with Lacfadio 
Hearn, " I have learnt about Japan only enough to 
convince me that I know nothing about Japan," 

British Columbia presents an example of a province 
where the Japanese enter in direct competition with 
home labour. The British Columbian authorities have 
tried in many ways to keep back the Japanese inflow, 
but they are held in check by the Ottawa Government. 
As late as the beginning of 1907, a member from that 
province made a very vigorous protest in the Dominion 
Parliament against the Japanese, declaring that their 
labourers were practically slaves under the control of 
labour bosses, and that the importation of them was 
unfair to the white people. Sir Wilfrid Laurier then 
laid down the principle upon which the Dominion 
Government has apparently acted, that " Japan is no 
longer a country of Asiatic civilisation, it is fast be- 
coming a European country." " If we want the 
trade of Japan, we cannot treat the Japanese population 
with contempt," he said. " We must recognise their 
value, and that they are allies of Great Britain. There 
is a great and always increasing tendency towards more 
intimate and closer relations between the nations of the 
East and the nations of the West." 

Five years ago, this question of the Japanese immi- 
gration to British Columbia was made the subject of 
a Royal Commission. The report of that Commission 
was on the whole decidedly hostile. Reading over 



THE PROBLEM OF THE EMIGRANT 169 

the evidence given before it, one is struck by the 
fact that the main objection to the Japanese was purely 
economic. Certain witnesses made protests against their 
moral ideals and the ways of living, but they were few. 
The great issue was that the Japanese undersell white 
men, that they employ methods which white men will 
not use. " The Japanese,'' the Commission reported, 
u are regarded as likely to prove keener competitors 
than the Chinese, in gardening, in lumbering, in fishing, 
and in ordinary labour." Witness after witness declared 
that they were finding the Japanese a more formidable 
rival than the Chinaman had ever been. 

In summarising its views the Commission said : " The 
Japanese ... is more independent, energetic, apt, and 
ready and anxious to adopt, at least in appearance, the 
manners and mode of life of the white man. He avails 
himself of every opportunity to learn English, and 
often makes it a condition of his contract of hiring 
that he may do so. It is said he is not as reliable 
in respect of contracts as the Chinese are, and that, 
while adopting to a certain extent our habits of life, 
he more readily falls into the vices of the white man 
than the Chinaman does. . . . The consensus of opinion 
of the people of British Columbia is that they do not 
and cannot assimilate with white people, and that while 
in some respects they are less undesirable than the 
Chinese, in that they adopt more readily our habits 
of life and spend more of their earnings in the country, 
yet in all that goes to make for the permanent settlement 
of the country they are quite as serious a menace as the 
Chinese and keener competitors against the working- 
man, and, as they have more energy, push, and independ- 
ence, more dangerous in this regard than the Chinese." 



i ;o THE UNVEILED EAST 

The Commission quoted an American authority : 
" Under the Japanese law every subject is registered 
in his native prefecture, which he may not leave 
without permission of the authorities and from which 
he, or she, must obtain their passport, when they 
desire to emigrate. Inasmuch as the Government claims 
the perpetual allegiance of its subject, it grants a 
passport, limited to three years, and I was informed 
that a large part of the emigrants who thus go abroad 
return to their native land sooner or later, and conse- 
quently few Japanese, and indeed I may say none, 
come to the United States with a view to remaining 
or making homes — the theory of their emigration 
system being for the promotion of emigration as an 
educational process and money-making investment for 
a temporary period, the profits of which accrue jointly 
to the promoter and to the emigrant, the Japanese 
Empire being the recipient of what may be described 
as the unearned increment through its people that 
thus go abroad, through their contact with more 
enlightened people, and by reason of the accumulated 
capital, which they return to their native land. It 
is through tenacious allegiance which the subjects 
of Japan yield to their sovereign that the promotion 
of emigration becomes a reasonably safe business." 

The American Indians were even more hostile to 
the Japanese than the whites. One Indian chief, 
speaking for a group of them, summed up the Indian 
point of view. " The Japanese come to this country, 
they come too thick altogether. It don't matter where 
you go you see Japanese. You go to the Fraser River 
you see Japanese, hundreds in the summer-time. You 
go to Howe Sound, nothing but Japanese. You go 



THE PROBLEM OF THE EMIGRANT 171 

to Indian River, just the same, nothing but Japanese. 
In fishing-time we have no chance to fish ourselves, 
and when we begin to fish we put our net into the 
boat and we go out to fish. Two or three nights we 
lost our nets. I lost mine : the Japanese cut it. I 
saw it was cut I saw the Japanese cut it. I caught 
the man. The Japanese thick on Point Gray : I have 
no chance to fish, so I can't fish. There are too many 
Japanese. You see boats three miles out from the 
coast, nothing but Japanese, and so we cannot make 
a living. The Japanese kill us : they are killing 
Indians, killing whites. My people have no chance 
to make a living. Can't make bread-and-butter ; no 
chance to go to work ; they are all over ; they work 
for nothing. They began about ten years ago and 
got thicker, thicker, thicker all the time, and last year 
too thick altogether." 

In Hawaii we find the second class of Japanese 
immigration ; that where the coolies go as labourers 
for white people. To-day the Japanese outnumber 
all other nations in Hawaii. There they have been 
seen at their best as emigrants. For some time there 
was practically no difficulty with them ; recently how- 
ever, owing to their increasing numbers, they are 
beginning to assert themselves in a way that threatens 
future trouble. Yet on the whole the Japanese 
emigrants have been efficient workers. The main issue 
in Hawaii is whether the Japanese or the Chinese make 
the more suitable labourers. On first impression, the 
Japanese is decidedly preferred. He is clean, and he 
insists upon cleanliness in his surroundings. He will 
not stay at a place where he cannot obtain hot water 
for his bath. If left alone he is fairly orderly, 



172 THE UNVEILED EAST 

although he can be, if necessary, very riotous ; he 
is a hard worker, and he spends very little. But on 
longer acquaintance the favourable effect produced by 
these good points is somewhat modified. One of the 
chief complaints about the Japanese is that they are 
always on the look-out for opportunities when they 
can strike, or use moments of difficulty to extort 
higher wages. Since the war the Japanese coolies have 
been followed by groups of small Japanese merchants 
who represent one of the less desirable elements of 
Japanese immigration. 

A very striking report was made on this matter 
in 1903 by Mr. Carroll D. Wright, the distinguished 
United States Commissioner of Labour, an official whose 
impartiality and capacity are universally recognised. 
In comparing the Chinese and Japanese labourers 
Mr. Wright declared that the sugar-planters have 
usually though not unanimously been in favour of 
the Chinese. The Chinaman is the more steady and 
reliable, while the Japanese has greater physical strength. 
" The Japanese/' said Mr. Wright, " is more cleanly 
about his person and tidy about his surroundings, 
and adopts much more readily all the superficial tokens 
of Caucasian civilisation. He wears European clothing, 
carries a watch, and seeks most eagerly for variety 
in life. He is constantly visiting new places and trying 
his hand at new trades. He represents the radical, 
the Chinaman the conservative, side of Oriental 
character. His white employers consider him mercurial, 
superficial, and untrustworthy in business matters. His 
vices are more occidental than those of the Chinese. 
He does not fall a victim to opium or the unnatural 
practices of the latter, but is fond of intoxicants. 



THE PROBLEM OF THE EMIGRANT 173 

Partly on account of his religion he is usually kind 
to animals and largely vegetarian in his diet. When 
the Japanese first began to arrive in the country one 
of the difficulties employers experienced was to persuade 
them to eat enough wholesome and strength-sustaining 
food to do a fair day's work. The Chinaman is 
said by planters to spend half again as much for his 
provisions as a Japanese. He eats meat, and not 
unusually is to be seen tramping home to his quarters 
with a canvas- wrapped ham on his shoulder. In 
matters of business honour, the Chinaman is considered 
vastly more reliable. He seldom deserts a contract, 
even though he lose heavily, while a Japanese will 
walk off and leave a manager in the lurch if he fails 
to get what he considers a profitable bargain." 

The Chinese sometimes settle down and become 
permanent members of the population of a foreign 
country, but the Japanese never. A certain proportion 
of the Chinamen who go to Hawaii marry there, 
adopt European ways and become semi-European. 
But once a Japanese, always a Japanese. " It is certain 
that Japan never lets go of its citizens, and does not 
intend that they shall form permanent ties in another 
country. This fact has so far distinguished Japanese 
immigration into Hawaii from European immigration 
into the United States. The Japanese, with his 
inherited reverence for the authority of his Govern- 
ment, is not a free agent in the social or industrial 
world and does not sever himself from the influence 
of his native rulers when he passes beyond the 
sphere of their political control." 

The third class, where the Japanese go as conquering 
people, can be found in Formosa, Korea, and Manchuria. 



i 7 4 THE UNVEILED EAST 

Of Formosa, I am not qualified to speak from personal 
observation. In Korea and Manchuria one sees the 
Japanese at their worst. The scores of thousands of 
people who have poured over the Straits of Tsushima 
since the war have assumed an arrogant and domineer- 
ing manner, a ruthlessness and a plan of systematic 
bullying which amazed those who only knew the 
Japanese at home. There are few Europeans in 
Korea, for instance, but can tell of ill-treatment and 
of petty tyranny from the minor Japanese. The stories 
I heard and verified on the spot in 1906 of white 
men and white women assaulted and abused made 
my blood boil more than once. What happens to 
them happens a hundredfold more to the natives. I 
have already detailed such treatment in previous 
chapters. 

The Japanese in Korea and Manchuria scrupulously 
preserve their own manner of living. Their aim 
seems to be to build in each place an exact copy of 
one of their home towns. The houses are of the 
same type, with the paper screens, the dainty ornamental 
doors, and the clean-matted floors. After a few 
houses have gone up, a school and a bath-house quickly 
follow, for both are essentials of Japanese life. Soon 
Japanese women of finer mould settle down. The 
geisha comes in numbers, and the twang of the 
samisen is heard day and night. The stores — mostly 
selling nothing but Japanese goods — multiply. It is 
a point of honour with Japanese in other Pacific 
lands to buy only home-made goods and to buy 
them from their own countrymen. 

The people of Australia already realise that the 
outward movement of the Japanese is creating a new 



THE PROBLEM OF THE EMIGRANT 175 

problem for them. To-day the Mongol is strictly 
excluded from Australia except in very limited numbers 
and for denned purposes. The Japanese view of this 
exclusion was clearly expressed by Professor Ishikawa, 
the Delegate from Tokyo University to the Melbourne 
Jubilee Celebrations in July last. In answer to a 
question respecting the prohibition of his countrymen 
from settling in Australia, he then said : " Needless 
to say, neither I nor my country-people like it. It 
is not so much that we are prevented from fulfilling 
a desire to come if the desire seized us, but we 
feel that our national dignity is affected. Surely an 
outcry would be raised if we were to apply the same 
principles to Britishers, not because they might want 
to come and would be thus prevented, but because 
of the inference which would necessarily follow. It 
really means that one nation considers another unworthy 
to enter its gates, We have a treaty with your 
nation, and yet you class us as unworthy to enter. 
Of course some folks have an idea that if the pro- 
hibition were removed, practically all Japan is so eager 
to escape from its own country that it would emigrate 
to Australia. It is a ridiculous one. We Japanese 
love our own country just as much as other nationalities 
do theirs, and the bulk of our people would no more 
dream of coming away from it than do the bulk of 
the Germans because Australia is open to the people 
of that nation." l 

Australia knows that the incoming of the Japanese 

would mean the destruction of its carefully erected 

industrial system, a system which, whatever else may 

be said, means that the working-man obtains higher 

1 Interview in Australasian Review of Reviews. 



i j 6 THE UNVEILED EAST 

wages for his labour, compared with the cost of living, 
and a better time, than probably in any other land on 
the earth. Australia knows that her shores are open 
to easy attack. She stands almost undefended save 
for the name and the prestige of England behind her. 
Before British fleets could come down to guard her 
from serious danger, all of her capitals could be laid 
in ruins. The north-west lies almost uninhabited 
and wholly undefended. The Sydney Bulletin sum- 
marised the issue in a cartoon where it showed the 
Japanese, depicted in very uncomplimentary fashion, 
standing outside the northern territory. Underneath 
was written : 

The Writing on the Wall 

Northern Territory. — Area 523,620 square miles. 

Population, 3,400 — 1 person to 150 square miles — 

Debt, £900 per inhabitant. 

No Railway. — No Assistance Near. — Walk in. 

It is this slanting shadow of the Orient to the South 
that caused Australia last autumn to promote her new 
schemes for national defence, a national army and a 
torpedo flotilla. It was this that made statesmen as 
far apart as Mr. Deakin, the Premier, and Mr. J. C. 
Watson, the Labour Leader, join in common agree- 
ment. Mr. Watson proclaimed the real issue in 
clearer tones than the Premier, hampered by official 
obligations, could. " The pressure of population," 
he said, " in the older parts of the world, and the 
awakening of what is colloquially known as c The 
East/ constitute at least a potential menace to any 
people situated as we are. Our wide areas of un- 



THE PROBLEM OF THE EMIGRANT 177 

peopled territory, rich with unrealised possibilities, 
must inevitably prove an attraction to nations confined 
within boundaries too small for the natural expansion 
of their populations. Even where there exists no 
desire to form colonies as such, the necessity of finding 
markets for manufactures points to the probability 
of friction and possible aggression on the part of old- 
world nations. . . . Just as it is criminal to encourage 
an unnecessary war, so it is suicidal to neglect adequate 
preparation for defence against aggression." 

New Zealand is awakening to the situation. " One 
of the greatest perils that the dwellers in the outlying 
portions of the empire in the Southern Seas have to face 
is the Yellow Peril," recently said Sir Joseph Ward, the 
Prime Minister of New Zealand. " Near the borders 
of China is a nation, closely allied, capable of teaching 
it, in warfare, the discipline essential to its success." 

The shadow has fallen on California and it is 
lengthening over Australia. The shadow deepens ! 



12 



CHAPTER XIV 
NEW CHINA 



i79 



CHAPTER XIV 
NEW CHINA 

CHINA is at last awakening from the sleep of 
centuries. The great Empire of the East, the 
oldest, the most populous, and the most highly organised 
on earth, has begun to modernise itself. For untold 
centuries the land of the Dragon lived its own life, 
haughty, exclusive, and indifferent to the rest of the 
world. Sixty years ago England forced it to open 
some of its ports to commerce, with the hard persuasion 
of brown-bess and cold steel. But England could 
not compel it to open its mind to Western influence. 

The Chinaman, serene in his ancient civilisation, 
despised us. In his heart he mocked at our inventions. 
He scorned the idea that the mere contraction of 
distance by rapid transit and telegraph was of any 
real benefit to humanity, and he had a decided con- 
viction that the substitution of machinery for hand 
labour was a curse. He doubted our morals and he 
regarded our family life, with its weak bonds between 
parents and children, as disgraceful. Our lack of 
reverence for old age was to him as horrible as we 
regard the cannibalism of the Pacific Islander. For 
English people, a nation of to-day, to attempt to 
instruct him, whose ancestors had great empire and 
good government in the year when Abraham led his 
flocks into Egypt, seemed little more than an odd jest. 

iSi 



1 82 THE UNVEILED EAST 

While Japan was as wax before Western teaching, 
China was marble. This state of affairs continued 
apparently unchanged up to the time of the Boxer 
trouble, less than seven years ago. The Chinese 
authorities adopted the systematic policy of blocking 
reform. Now and then an official would arise, appa- 
rently touched by Western influences ; occasionally a 
small group of students would be sent abroad to learn 
Western ways ; sometimes a foreign adviser would 
be employed and his advice deliberately ignored. The 
Japanese War of 1894-5 was the first definite move 
towards the awakening of China. The Chinese were 
as astonished by the Japanese victories as we would 
be if the Channel Islanders defeated the English. 
They had regarded the men of Nippon as contemptible 
dwarfs, and they openly scorned them for what they 
considered their racial treachery in adopting Western 
ways. When the dwarfs easily defeated a nation ten 
times their number, Peking officialdom began to realise 
that modern weapons and modern training spell power. 

The events that followed the war drove the lesson 
home. The wholesale seizure of Chinese territory by 
European Powers cut deep into the national heart. 
Germany took Kiao-chau, Russia Port Arthur, and 
England Wei-hai-wei. Foreign publicists sketched 
out schemes for the partitioning of China among the 
Powers, giving thirteen out of the eighteen provinces 
to England, Russia, Germany, Japan, and France. 
Even the bureaucrats in the Forbidden City knew that 
China had no power of resistance. The era of con- 
cessions and secret treaties followed. 

One spasmodic attempt was made to transform the 
face of the nation. The young Emperor, Kwang-SCi, 



NEW CHINA 183 

fell under the influence of a great scholar and reformer, 
Kang-Yu-Wei. In the summer of 1898 the Emperor 
issued a series of proclamations which left the world 
breathless and amazed. One imperial edict sanctioned 
the use of temples as schools ; and a number of useless 
departments and obsolete offices were swept out of exist- 
ence, taking the livelihood from thousands of officials. 

A group of extremists recommended that the Emperor 
should go on a voyage around the world, and when 
the Board of Rights refused to present the memorial 
to the Emperor he dismissed six of its officials, in a 
sudden burst of passion. Freedom of the press was 
decreed, and one revolutionary edict granted to all 
subjects the right of petition direct to the Emperor. 
Still further schemes of sensational reform were 
afoot. It was commonly rumoured that the Emperor 
was taking lessons in Christianity ; it was proposed 
to abolish the existing system of classical examinations ; 
the kow-tow, the distinctive loyal obeisance, was to be 
swept away ; the telegraph was being used to promulgate 
imperial edicts ; and it was popularly believed that the 
Emperor intended to command his people to cut off 
their pig-tails and wear European dress. 

The reactionaries and the displaced officials gathered 
together and found a leader in the Dowager Empress, 
Tzu-hi. The Dowager Empress proved herself then, 
as she has done since, one of the most remarkable 
women of her generation. The daughter of a petty 
Manchu official in Peking, she had been taken into 
the harem of the Chinese Emperor in her youth. 
There, thanks to her remarkable beauty and great 
gifts, she quickly rose to a foremost place. She became 
the friend and companion of the Empress, and on the 



i8 4 THE UNVEILED EAST 

death of the Emperor the son of Tzu-hi was the next 
successor to the throne. When Tzu-hi's son be- 
came Emperor, the Empress Regent made her 
Dowager Empress. Tzu-hi's son died, and she, now 
the great power in the Palace, had a son of Prince Suen 
chosen as Emperor under the title of Kwang-Su. The 
new Emperor was only four years old, and so the 
Empress Regent and the Dowager Empress exercised 
full control of affairs of State for many years. In 
1880 the Empress Regent died and Tzu-hi now had 
entire power in her hands. When the young Emperor 
grew up and took supreme place, there was a constant 
war between him and the Dowager Empress, who had 
learnt to love the authority she had exercised so long. 
The revolt of the reactionaries gave her the chance 
she wanted. She acted quickly, and, before the 
Emperor could prevent it, by a masterly stroke 
made him a prisoner, and took the government of the 
country once more in her hands. 

The whole land was in a ferment. Foreign Powers 
were growing daily more and more aggressive. Deep 
and not unnatural resentment was springing up against 
them among the people. A secret society determined 
to drive the foreigners out altogether, and the Boxer 
movement, in the end largely controlled and encouraged 
by the Dowager Empress herself, was the result. It 
was the dying struggle of stricken conservatism. The 
great burst of national passion was the flaming torch 
lighting the way to a new era. It only needed the 
Russo-Japanese War, with its proof of what a fully 
equipped Asiatic nation could do against Europeans, 
to clinch the new movement. The hour of the 
apparent failure of Western influence was the dawn 



NEW CHINA 185 

of the day of its success. The scorn and contempt 
for foreign ways and foreign learning have been sharply 
checked. Forced by hard experience, the dominant 
brains of the Empire have come to see that the upstart 
aud parvenu West has something to teach them. 
To-day, under the leadership of the Dowager Empress 
herself, the leading reforms which were proposed by 
Kang-Yu-Wei in 1898 are being largely carried out. 
The system of examinations has been changed, and 
classical learning put in a secondary place ; the old 
type of officialdom has been given its deathblow ; 
temples are being turned into schools and offices, and 
a new educational system has sprung up. The old- 
style warrior, armed with bow and arrow and drilled 
in making ugly faces to frighten his foe, is being swept 
away to make room for the khaki-clad soldier with 
magazine rifle. The railway, the telegraph, and the 
newspaper are spreading all over the Empire. 

Woman, long confined to her home, is now taking 
her place in public life. Footbinding, the supreme 
device for the subjection of the weaker sex, is passing 
out of fashion. Schools are springing up as though 
by magic, and Western science and learning are taught 
in them. Young Chinese are going to other lands 
by the ten thousand. An industrial revolution has 
begun, and factories have come to stay. 

Most revolutions begin from the bottom. This 
revolution has started from the top. It is not the 
mob that is urging reform on the rulers, but the 
rulers who are stirring up the mob. The changes 
were only permitted after long hesitation and careful 
inquiry. The very delay is the best proof that they 
will be pushed to the end. 



1 86 THE UNVEILED EAST 

What has brought about the new movement ? One 
thing, and one thing only — the realisation by the 
Chinese that unless they do something the future of 
their Empire is doomed. Reform in this case is an 
outbreak of sincere patriotism. 

One of the most remarkable features of the new 
movement is the use made of the press. The last 
few years have seen the rise of hundreds of daily 
papers, most of them with circulations running into 
many thousands and many with world cable services. 
Peking alone has over a dozen journals — including one 
for women, written largely by Chinese women. These, 
be it noted, are not enterprises begun by foreigners 
to teach the Chinese, but they are started and managed 
by the Chinese themselves. Foreigners are, it is true, 
trying to control the press for political reasons, the 
Japanese being particularly active in this direction. 
Some of the most bitterly anti-European journals in 
China to-day are under Japanese editorship. But the 
greater part of Chinese journalism is genuinely 
native, and is a response to the newly aroused passion 
for news among the people. 

The various governors and viceroys have plunged 
into journalism. The Post Office collects subscriptions 
for, and distributes freely, three official organs. 
Throughout China, newspapers are officially posted on 
the walls for all to read. Those who formerly cared for 
nothing outside their own villages are now athirst with 
unquenchable curiosity about the affairs of the world. 
In walking through the back streets of Peking or other 
cities you will often notice men with papers in their 
hands reading to assembled crowds. These are news- 
men, proclaiming the intelligence to the whole people. 



NEW CHINA 187 

The dominant note of these new journals may be 
summed up in a phrase, '* Wake up, China." Six 
years ago, the message was " Awake and slay the 
foreigner." Now the cry is "Awake and make your- 
selves as good as the foreigner." " Are you dead 
men ? Have you no heart ? " the chief magistrate 
of Haicheng demands of his people in a journal which 
he issues and largely writes himself. u Would you 
sleep if a man had a sword at the throat of your 
father ? Do you not realise that unless you stir 
yourselves and reform, Western nations will come in 
and take our land from us? " 

Myriads of books and pamphlets of every kind are 
pouring from the press, and are being bought in 
wholesale fashion, rich men giving their money freely 
to help. Here again the only nation that is awake 
to the importance of this use of the press — apart from 
the missionaries — is Japan, and Japanese agents are 
circulating works calculated to influence China in their 
nation's favour on a very large scale. But the majority 
of the publications are purely Chinese. One of the 
most widely circulated of them, c/f Plea for Patriotism, 
shows the nature of the dominant appeal. " The 
Westerner assumes an attitude of overbearing superi- 
ority towards us," it says. " America shuts out our 
labourers. South Africa invites them and then treats 
them as though they were criminals. The reason for 
all this is to be found partly in ourselves. Our opium 
habit and our petty dishonesties have brought contempt 
upon us. But it is high time to reform." 

The abolition of classical examinations for civil service 
appointments is perhaps the most important of all the 
changes. China is one of the most highly organised 



1 88 THE UNVEILED EAST 

bureaucracies on earth, and its highest official appoint- 
ments are open to the humblest youth. The only road 
to office — save in exceptional cases — was, until a few 
months ago, a minute knowledge of Confucian classics. 
To acquire this, a young man had to devote the best 
years of his life to unceasing study of old books. No 
surer means could have been devised for putting him 
out of touch with actuality. Now, with a stroke of 
the pen, all this has gone. The first requirement for 
office now is not that a man shall know Confucius, but 
that he shall have been abroad. 

Thousands of youths have dropped their classics and 
have gone to other lands, most of them to Japan. A 
smaller number have come even to Europe and 
America, and to-day there are about a hundred picked 
students in England. One leading official of my ac- 
quaintance declares that the best blow that can be 
struck for reform is to despatch fifty thousand picked 
young men for training to England and America. I 
understand that he is endeavouring to induce the 
imperial authorities to co-operate in some such scheme, 
but so far it remains in the region of dreams. In the 
early autumn of last year there were between thirteen 
and fourteen thousand Chinese students in Japan, 
mainly in Tokyo, the Japanese Government having 
given them every possible encouragement. When 
last in Japan I examined carefully the system of 
education adopted for these young men in the Japanese 
capital. Theoretically it is admirable, and some of 
the teachers are capable, broad-minded, and thoroughly 
trained. But I came to the conclusion then that the 
whole system was vitiated by one fault. In place of 
giving students a thorough education, lasting over 



NEW CHINA 189 

several years, the Japanese authorities have prepared 
" cramming " courses in which the Chinese is given a 
smattering of foreign learning in six months or even 
less. I found that the overwhelming majority of the 
students do not stay for more than six months, and 
very many try to get their foreign education finished 
in three. In one of the largest of the colleges I asked 
the Principal how many students had remained for the 
three years' course. He answered, " Not one." The 
result of this has already been seen in the examinations 
in China, the Japanese-trained students having come 
out very badly indeed. The Japanese press tries to 
explain this on the ground that the Chinese examiners 
are prejudiced against students who have gone to 
Japan. The more obvious reason is the right one. 
To attempt to change the current of men's thought 
and education in six months is ludicrous. 

In many of the provinces, viceroys and governors 
have started not only schools, but social institutes, 
mercantile clubs, and debating societies of every kind. 
The governors themselves join in the work of these 
institutes, and practically act the part of University 
Extension Lecturers. Thus at the time I passed 
through Moukden, the Tartar-General there was taking 
a great interest in a debating club he had opened, and 
was himself leading in the discussions. This society 
dealt freely with all the burning political questions of 
the day. Viceroy Yuan-Shih-kai, the great Viceroy of 
Chi-li, during the last autumn delivered lectures in a 
merchants' club at Tientsin, on constitutionalism, 
commerce, and reform. 

New systems of sanitation are being carried out in 
many of the great towns. Streets are being widened, 



190 THE UNVEILED EAST 

and many street-lighting schemes have been begun. 
Not long ago the Chinese resolutely prevented the 
construction of railways ; to-day, China is building 
railways in all directions. Peking is now within two 
days' journey of Hankow, the commercial centre of 
the Empire. Hankow will soon be within two days' 
of Canton. Within a few years a series of lines will 
branch out from Hankow, which will make China as 
easily traversed as America is to-day. The railways 
that already are opened are being freely used by all 
classes, and they are doing much to revolutionise the 
thought of the people. 

China is becoming more and more a united nation. 
The viceroys and governors now see for themselves, 
in place of listening to rumours. The journey to 
the capital, which not long since involved a month of 
hard, dangerous, and difficult travelling, can be done 
in two days, with every accompaniment of luxury. 
When China was defeated by Japan, cynical observers 
remarked that the people of the inner provinces would 
not know for years that there had been a war, and 
that when the news reached them they would be told 
stories of victory. Now the post, the telegraph, and 
the train make the events of to-day in one city the 
common talk of half China within a week. The 
reforms in Chi-li, as a case in point, are leading to 
changes in every part of the Empire, the viceroys of 
other provinces having visited there, and witnessed 
the benefits of the new departures. The same causes 
that are bringing all parts of China closer together are 
bridging over the gulf of distance between the East 
and West. Not many years ago Peking was fifty 
days from London. Then the journey was reduced 



NEW CHINA 191 

to about thirty-five days ; now, thanks to the Siberian 
Railway, one can go from Charing Cross to the For- 
bidden City in a little over twenty days ; before many 
years, when the contemplated railway between Peking 
and Irkutsk is completed, Peking will be within fourteen 
days' journey of London. The Chinaman will then be 
an actuality in our streets as he never has been before. 

Here then we have China in the first stage of re- 
naissance. The change has only begun. There are 
admittedly great regions yet untouched by the new 
movement. But the growth within the past eighteen 
months has been so rapid that even the transformation 
of Japan bids fair to be left behind for speed and for 
completeness. A new patriotism has sprung up in 
the hearts of the people. This great nation, with its 
enormous, unworked resources, with its merchant 
princes whose wealth and enterprise can compare with 
the greatest of our own, with its vast supplies of cheap 
and capable labour, is stepping out of darkness into 
light. 

How will it affect us ? How will it touch that 
civilisation which Europe has built up with tears and 
prayers and high endeavour in the course of many 
centuries ? Is the coming of the Chinaman for weal, 
or is it for woe ? Will he be the sinister shadow 
clouding and darkening our future ? Are the old 
dreams of the Yellow Peril, of the millions of armed 
men to be flung against us as Goths were flung against 
ancient Rome, likely to become actual facts ? Or is 
he to be a new factor in bringing to this old earth of 
ours that beatific age of which seers and poets have 
ever dreamt ? On the answer to these questions largely 
depends the future of the world. 



1 92 THE UNVEILED EAST 

Such a movement influencing so vast a nation, 
with such ancient and established customs, cannot 
be accomplished easily or without great set-backs. It 
is almost certain that the birth-throes of the new era 
will be tumultuous. The conservatives will, at times, 
appear to triumph ; the reformers, one day in favour, 
will the next be in disgrace ; and many of the men 
now leading the new movement will probably end their 
lives the victims of popular passion or court intrigue. 
But the movement will go on, and ebb will be ever 
followed by greater flow. For there are forces behind 
it, the impulse of economic necessity, the desire for 
national reassertion and the ambition for world 
honour, before which reaction will break its force in 
vain. 



CHAPTER XV 

VICEROY YUAN— REFORMER 



i93 13 



CHAPTER XV 

VICEROY YUAN-REFORMER 

IN the great palace on the river bank at Tientsin, 
with demonic figures painted on the outer gate 
to tell of stern justice within, lives Yuan Shih-kai, 
Viceroy of Chi-li, leader of the Reform Movement, 
and the strongest personality in China. 

As becomes one who is lord of many millions, he 
is surrounded by great state. The splendours of his 
palace, with its gorgeously coloured walls, its magnifi- 
cent adornments, its myriad electric lights, its priceless 
treasures in silk and art and pottery scattered pro- 
fusely around, and its army of officials in wonderfully 
embroidered robes of gold and crimson and green 
and blue, might well exhaust powers of description. 
Every robe is symbolic. The embroidered dragon on 
the breast of the high functionary, with its staring 
eyes, its fearsome teeth, and its gold-braided savagery, 
tells of the watchfulness of the man who wears it. 

One of Yuan's great receptions, say on the 
birthday of the Emperor, calls to mind the Oriental 
courts of romance. At one end of the great central 
reception hall a Chinese play continues throughout the 
evening. The ceaseless clamour, the marvellous 
gymnastics, the high falsetto voices of the per- 
formers, whose dress reminds one of a fantastical 
Father Christmas, and the din of the musical 
i95 



196 THE UNVEILED EAST 

instruments, make a total that is striking if not 
harmonious. In the courtyard, you can listen to the 
strains of a Chinese military band, playing ragtime 
music, military marches, and classical selections in- 
differently. At intervals half of the bandsmen begin 
to sing, and as the strains of a familiar English air 
arise you might well believe yourself at home. 

At such a reception one sees men of almost every 
race. Four years ago the Russian official was the 
most prominent of all. To-day the Russian is in the 
background, and numerous Japanese, in elaborately 
decorated European dress, take the front seats and 
push themselves to a foremost place. It seems part 
of the present Japanese policy in the Far East to 
substitute display for the careful self-repression of 
yesterday. The minor Japanese at such a function 
robe themselves in garments which lend the appear- 
ance of rank to the wearers. There are European 
officials of many nations at these receptions, other 
Europeans who take high places in Yuan's court, and 
the usual gathering of merchants and concession- 
hunters. The spies from Yuan's rivals are there, 
noting everything and ready to prepare facts for some 
fresh report to the court about the great Viceroy's 
ostentation. A score of languages are spoken around. 
Mandarin Chinese drops at times to lesser-known 
dialects. The official who shakes your hand and 
smiles cordially at you is a notable friend of reform, 
who has risked life half a dozen times to help 
to bring China into line with the West. The 
man in the central group, with wizened body, is 
the only known opium smoker in Yuan's service. 
Near him is one who is even now nursing and 



VICEROY YUAN— REFORMER 197 

maturing schemes that he hopes will make him 
greater than Yuan himself. And in the centre of all 
is the Viceroy. He can never be taken for anything 
but a king among his fellows. With strong body, an 
immense head, and piercing eyes, he bears with him 
the sense of power. He is the man who has cut a 
clear way through the entrenched conservatism of his 
people. You notice that Yuan and his officials do not 
attempt to ape Western dress ; silk garments, long 
robes, and pig- tails are still the fashion. 

The entrances to the yamen are guarded by modern 
troops, and in the courtyards you can hear the hoarse 
voices of the drill-serjeants, busy shaping their 
companies. Outside the doors you will come upon 
groups of prisoners, with cangues around their necks — 
rough wooden squares about two feet six inches each 
way and with notices on them proclaiming the offences 
of their wearers. Do not fail to observe the towering 
wireless telegraph pole — Marconi system — a little out- 
side the palace. Yuan lives amidst intrigue and has 
to guard against conspirators. Special telegraph wires 
connect him with the Forbidden City in Peking, and 
with his armies in the provinces. But he has to be 
prepared for the cutting of ordinary wires. Thanks to 
his wireless mast, he can keep up constant communi- 
cation with his army at Paotingfu, and with his agents 
in the Imperial Palace, whatever his enemies may do. 

Tientsin, where Yuan has his head quarters, is 
rapidly increasing in importance, both as a native city 
and as one of the main points for foreign residence 
and trade. There are two Tientsins adjoining one 
another — the foreign city, consisting of a group of 
concessions to foreign Powers, and the great native 



198 THE UNVEILED EAST 

town, said to contain a million people. The foreign 
city is admirably built and very healthy, and is one 
of the pleasantest European settlements in the Far 
East. Thanks to the fact that it is some distance up 
the river, it escapes the large and not wholly desirable 
element which gathers where many foreign liners and 
warships call. Originally there were three concessions, 
the British, French, and German. Within the past 
few years Russia, Belgium, Austria, and Japan have all 
taken over considerable areas of land. The Japanese 
are covering their domain with many hundreds of 
foreign-built houses, and with great warehouses. They 
are creating an active and important business centre 
of their own. The Russian Concession is the head- 
quarters of the gambling dens near the railway 
station ; but the people of Tientsin always, despite the 
curse of these dens, remember the Russians with 
gratitude. It was undoubtedly the magnificent fighting 
qualities of the Russian troops that saved Tientsin 
from destruction during the fierce days of 1900, 
when the Boxers attacked the foreign quarters. 

The British Concession is the business centre of 
Tientsin ; the French Concession occupies a secondary 
place ; and the German Concession is being covered 
with numbers of very fine residences. No visitor 
arriving from the interior can fail to be charmed with 
the kindly and pleasant life, the good shops, the com- 
fortable hotel accommodation, and the magnificent clubs. 
To me, coming as I did for the first time to Tientsin 
after a period of residence in Northern Korea and in 
the interior of Manchuria, it seemed that I had arrived 
in some fabled land of ease. 

It is fitting that Tientsin should be the home of 



VICEROY YUAN— REFORMER 199 

China's progressive Viceroy. He lives, of course, not 
in the foreign city, but in his own great palace in the 
native part. No one who walks up the roadway around 
his yamen can fail to be struck by the fact that, 
admirable and comfortable as are the homes of well- 
to-do Europeans in the foreign settlement, they are 
hopelessly outdone in mere magnificence by the modern 
homes of the rich Chinese who have gathered around 
Yuan. One sees, along the river road, a line of palaces 
erected at a cost, and maintained in a style, that would 
be worthy of Park Lane or Fifth Avenue. They are 
the best testimony to the riches and prosperity of 
China's merchant princes. 

Tientsin has played a leading part in modern Chinese 
life for many years. It was a point of departure 
in the expedition of the Allies in 1858. When Li 
Hung Chang became the premier statesman in China, 
he made his home here, holding the viceroyalty which 
Yuan now fills. In those days Tientsin was notorious 
as being one of the most disorderly centres in the Far 
East, and in 1870 an appalling massacre of French nuns 
took place in it. In 1890, during the Boxer trouble, 
Tientsin stood a long siege, and afterwards, when 
under the rule of a Provisional Government composed 
of representatives of the Allied Armies, it gave a re- 
markable example of temporary foreign rule in China. 
In 1892, the native city was handed back again to 
Viceroy Yuan, and it has since been an example 
in reform for all Asia to see. 

Yuan is still a young man, barely fifty. In 1882 
he was in Korea, in command of three thousand 
Chinese troops, sent there by the Peking authorities to 
maintain order. Three years later he went to Seoul as 



200 THE UNVEILED EAST 

Chinese Representative, and took the title of Resident. 
He was one of the leading figures in the assertion 
of Chinese suzerainty in Korea before the war, and 
doubtless he, like many others of his countrymen, 
found it impossible to believe that the four hundred 
millions of China could do anything but destroy the 
forty millions of Japan, who were daring to challenge 
them. But for the experience of the Chino- Japanese 
War, Yuan might have continued to this day as an 
official of the old type. He emerged from those times 
of defeat and disaster with one lesson burned into his 
brain. He realised that China could never be able 
to hold her own until she acquired the knowledge of 
the West, as Japan had done. 

He returned to China a reformer. He was then 
a Taotai, a high official only two grades from a 
governor. In spite of his former control of his Chinese 
troops at Seoul, he was not a military man. But in 
China it is held that a clever administrator ought to 
be able to adapt himself to anything, whether it be 
the command of a battleship or the ruling of a province. 
A new force of modern-trained soldiers had been 
gathered together at Hsiao-Chau, and Yuan was placed 
in command of them. It was the chance of his life, and 
he took it. He proved to be a born general. He was 
honest and he demanded honesty in his subordinates. 
He himself laboured almost day and night, and he 
worked his soldiers as men had never been worked 
before under Chinese discipline. Soon the little army 
became famous as a really efficient force, the only 
one in China. The fuller story of his military ex- 
periences is told in the chapter on " The New 
Chinese Army," and need not be recapitulated here. 



VICEROY YUAN— REFORMER 201 

Soon there came a crisis in Yuan's career. He had 
to choose whether he would throw himself in with the 
new reform party at Peking, or serve under the 
Empress Dowager. Peking was torn with dissensions 
owing to the revolutionary edicts promulgated by the 
young Emperor. The conservative party gathered 
round the Empress Dowager. The Emperor's advisers 
determined to strike at the fountain head of their foes. 
The Emperor sent for Yuan, and in private conference 
ordered him to execute Jung-Lu, one of the leaders of 
the anti-reform party, to surround the palace of the 
Dowager Empress with troops, and to remove her to 
another place, by force if necessary. Jung-Lu was 
Yuan's old patron. The general could not strike at 
him without showing the basest ingratitude, for to 
Jung-Lu he had mainly owed his education and advance 
in life. Yuan demanded from the Emperor the orders 
in writing, and the Emperor, evidently expecting some 
such request, produced from his boot documents already 
sealed, and handed them over. 

Then Yuan returned to Tientsin. He called on 
Jung-Lu. " I have commands from the Emperor con- 
cerning you," he said. " The orders are so terrible 
that I dare not tell them, but will give them to you 
to read." 

Jung-Lu took the paper, read it, and bowed. " The 
will of the Emperor must be done," he said sub- 
missively. 

Yuan assented. f ' But," said Yuan, " you must 
have certain private affairs to put in order. I will 
return to-morrow evening to fulfil the Emperor's 
commands." 

Thereupon Yuan left. His meaning was obvious. 



202 THE UNVEILED EAST 

That night Jung-Lu hurried up to Peking, and saw 
the Dowager Empress. How the Dowager Empress 
rose to the occasion is a matter of history. 

This action of Yuan's was and will be one of the 
most debated in his life. For myself, I am prepared 
neither to condemn nor approve, for one knows too 
well that beneath the open and surface facts of the 
case were others of which we can discover nothing. 
It was undoubtedly Yuan's action that killed the 
reform movement of 1898. 

In the following year he was made Governor of 
Shantung. He took his army with him, and when 
the great trouble of 1900 came he protected the 
Europeans in his province and fought the Boxers. 
Although the whole country around was in a ferment, 
his province practically alone in the north was safe 
and secure. When the Dowager Empress issued a 
decree calling directly on the viceroys and governors 
to fight the foreigners, Yuan was one of the few 
who refused to obey. He and two others entered 
into an agreement with one another and with the 
foreign Powers that order would be maintained in 
their districts, but that the foreign troops and gun- 
boats were to keep away from them. For a time 
Yuan was the most unpopular official in China. He 
was openly and constantly threatened with rebellion 
and with assassination, and it required a special guard 
of a thousand men, the pick of his troops, around 
his yamen gates, and an array of machine guns, 
to prevent a great uprising in his province against 
him, and to check the crowds that would have in- 
vaded his palace and torn him limb from limb. 

The Boxer movement failed, and the Chinese 



VICEROY YUAN— REFORMER 203 

discovered that, while even the great province of 
Chi-li was overrun with foreign soldiers, Shantung, 
under Yuan's administration, had been kept free 
from them. The despised and hated governor of 
yesterday became the popular hero of to-day, and 
Yuan was raised to the viceroyalty of Chi-li, the 
province around Peking, strategically and politically 
the most important in China. Backed by his in- 
separable soldiers, Yuan now started to make his 
influence feJt throughout China. He first increased 
his army, adding division to division. Better weapons 
and more modern guns were brought in. At the 
same time Yuan entered upon a campaign of social 
and municipal reform. 

His hand was quickly felt in Tientsin itself. Under 
the Provisional Government, composed of the repre- 
sentatives of the Powers, great reforms had been 
carried out in the native city. The old city wall 
was torn down, and a boulevard constructed in its 
place. The famous black forts had been destroyed, and 
an electric tramway run through the city ; new and wide 
streets had been cut, sanitation introduced, and good 
order maintained. Under the Provisional Govern- 
ment Tientsin became an example to Chinese cities. 
Every one anticipated that as soon as the Chinese 
recovered possession it would revert to its old 
conditions of disorder, unhealthiness, and apathy. 
To the universal surprise, Yuan outdid the reforms 
of the Europeans. He made the streets still wider ; he 
built new bridges ; he established an excellent police 
force with a German in chief command under the 
Taotai, and a Scotchman as assistant superintendent. 
This police force, with about 28,00 Chinese constables 



2o 4 THE UNVEILED EAST 

and over fifty Indians, is a model of its kind, and 
it maintains order and regulates traffic in a way not 
unworthy of a fine corps of British police. Yuan 
opened up fresh districts, and increased the value of 
land in some parts a hundredfold. His Local Board 
insisted that property owners in the main roads should 
rebuild their houses in a manner worthy of a great 
capital. He started schools of every kind — schools 
for boys and schools for girls, technical establishments 
for the poorer youth of the city, and higher-grade 
training centres for future officials. He enforced such 
discipline that to-day the young daughters of well- 
to-do Chinamen can walk to and from school un- 
attended, and without insult. 

One of his most striking reforms has been the 
construction of a model prison outside the city. The 
old type of Chinese prison was and is a place of 
horror. The scenes to be witnessed around the 
yamens of some of the mandarins are so awful that 
they give the European who is forced to behold 
them a fresh revelation of the possibilities of human 
fiendishness. In spite of the nominal abolition of 
torture, it is still carried out in some of the outlying 
parts of China, or was when I visited them late in 
the autumn of 1906. Yuan not only abolished 
torture, but made his new prison worthy of comparison 
with some of the best in the West. The Tientsin 
establishment is divided into two parts, one, holding 
six hundred, for the criminals, the other, holding 
fourteen hundred, for the loafers and idlers. A man 
who wilfully makes himself a charge on the community 
and will not work is sent to this loafers' prison. He 
is kept there for about six months ; he is taught a 



VICEROY YUAN— REFORMER 205 

trade ; he is trained in habits of industry ; and he is 
then sent out into the world again with skilled fingers 
and strengthened body, able to earn his bread. If 
he refuses to work he is sent from the loafers' prison 
to the more severe discipline of the criminal section. 
I spent an afternoon in this prison examining with 
the greatest interest the cells and the methods of 
employing the men. I found a prison hospital, where 
a modern-trained doctor attended to the men under 
admirable sanitary conditions. I saw the great hall 
where each evening the men are brought together 
for an hour's lecture by the prison governor, who 
himself is a Christian, upon the necessity for moral 
reform. The administrators of the Tientsin prisons 
believe that if a man is to be cured of crime and 
cured of laziness, his brain, his soul, and his body 
must all be brought under discipline. 

At the same time, Yuan was turning his attention 
to his provincial officials. It soon became known 
that the only hope for a man to obtain promotion 
under him was to have seen something of other lands. 
He obtained the services of many Cantonese, nimble- 
witted men of the south, who had lived and learned 
in England and America. He secured places for his 
favourites and adherents in the Palace at Peking and 
on the great Boards of State. He was and is constant 
in advocating constitutional government for China. 
All the conservative forces of the country soon came 
to know this man as their foe. He cleared priests 
out of their temples, and established schools in them. 
He gathered the merchants together and would lecture 
them on political economy. He made the lives of 
obese and corrupt mandarins a burden. 



206 THE UNVEILED EAST 

Time after time the reactionary forces have gathered 
against him. The Dowager Empress remembers that 
it was he who saved her when her life was threatened, 
and who did much towards preserving the independence 
of China after the Boxer trouble. But it yet remains 
to be seen whether Yuan can triumph over the strong 
and established customs he is attacking. The reforms 
he advocates are most of them certain to prevail, but 
there is yet a possibility that in the triumph of the 
reforms the premier reformer himself may go under. 
Were England playing in the Far East the part she 
did fifty years ago, it would be for us, by the weight 
of our diplomatic influence, to strengthen the arms and 
consolidate the position of this man who is fighting 
the battle of civilisation on the shores of the Yellow 
Sea. I, for one, cannot yet wholly abandon the hope 
that my own country will realise the neglected possi- 
bilities still before her. 

In his personal life Yuan is quiet and, so far as 
his position allows, simple. Like all Chinese officials, 
he has several wives, the number being variously stated 
as from six to eleven. He is a voracious worker, and 
although only speaking Chinese he keeps in touch 
with Western thought by the aid of translators. He 
devotes special attention to military works, and natur- 
ally he chiefly goes to the German military texts for 
his authorities. The Viceroy is no open book for all 
men to read. His palace is the centre of a hundred 
intrigues, national and international. He has multi- 
tudes of enemies, but up to now the armed men at 
his back — men who have been taught that their primary 
duty is loyalty to their Viceroy — have protected him. 
Now in favour, now out of favour, he goes on his way. 



VICEROY YUAN— REFORMER 207 

It is difficult to forecast the future of any Chinese 
statesman. Time after time before to-day we have 
seen apparently strong officials arise, keen on new 
departures, and for a time carrying all before them ; 
then they have sunk into powerlessness. But there 
is much in the character, the purpose, and the wise 
policy of the Viceroy of Chi-li which gives reason to 
hope that this will not be so with him. In the political 
disturbances which must come to China within the 
next few years, his voice and authority may be pre- 
dominant. Either as the power behind the throne 
or in yet higher place, those who know him best 
believe that he will still do much for new China. 



CHAPTER XVI 

THE NEW CHINESE ARMY 



209 14 



CHAPTER XVI 

THE NEW CHINESE ARMY 

TWELVE years ago the Chinese soldier was a relic 
of the Middle Ages. He was armed with bow 
and arrow, three-pronged fork, double-handled sword, 
ox-hide buckler, and two-man jingal. His officers had 
a deserved reputation for corruption and cowardice ; 
his food was bad, his training was absurd, and his 
discipline slight. 

To-day one finds him — and three score thousand 
of him in the single province of Chil-li alone — dressed 
in khaki in summer and blue serge in winter, clean, 
well-shod, and with peaked cap shielding his eyes from 
the sun. He carries a useful rifle, Mannlicher or 
Mauser, and he knows how to use it. He is well- 
fed, well-clothed, and well-housed, and is led by 
officers of his own race who have absorbed something 
of the methods and discipline of the German army. 
Quick-firing Krupp, Creusot, and Armstrong guns are 
in his train. Foreign-taught doctors watch over his 
health, and skilled vets care for his horse. China is 
resolutely attacking the problem of creating a force 
capable of defending her against outside aggression. 

Ten years ago the profession of the soldier was 
one of the most despised in China. A typical incident 
will help to show this. Two ladies of high family 
visited a friend of mine, the wife of an English doctor 



212 THE UNVEILED EAST 

in Chi-li. It was the first time they had been in a 
European house, and they were all smiles, uttering 
constant exclamations of pleasure and surprise as they 
examined the novel foreign furniture. At last they 
came to a framed photograph of an English artillery 
officer, displayed prominently in the drawing-room. 
Who was this? they asked. The hostess proudly 
replied that it was a portrait of her brother. The smiles 
on the faces of the Chinese ladies died away. They 
looked suddenly grave and alarmed. As the hostess 
moved a little ahead, they turned anxiously to another 
English lady present. "Tell us," they whispered 

quickly, " is not Mrs. of a respectable family ? " 

It was incredible to them that any decent household 
could permit one of its members to be a soldier ! 

The ladies were merely reflecting the common 
national sentiment. A soldier was little better than 
a pariah. To-day that feeling is rapidly passing away. 
There have been cases recently of well-to-do men 
voluntarily enlisting in the Army as private soldiers 
as an example of patriotism to their fellows. The 
sons of viceroys serve as officers. Once it was almost 
impossible to obtain men of good family as cadets. 
Now an announcement in the provinces of Chi-li that 
an examination for military cadetship will be held 
brings scores of applicants of good social standing 
for each vacancy. 

The new Chinese army owes its creation largely to 
one man, Viceroy Yuan. Up to now it has been a 
misnomer to speak of a Chinese army as though it 
were one body. There have been nineteen armies ; 
one for each of the eighteen provinces, and one for 
Manchuria. Each of these armies has been under 



THE NEW CHINESE ARMY 213 

the control of the viceroy or governor of the province, 
who has been practically solely responsible for its 
equipment, discipline, and drill. The Chinese authorities 
fully realise that efficiency of national defence can only 
be secured by the centralisation of control of the 
national forces as one imperial department. There 
are many difficulties in the way of this, but great efforts 
are being made to bring it to pass. The new Army 
Organisation Office at Peking is aiming at creating 
one army corps in each of the eighteen provinces. 
The various viceroys were supposed to be building 
these corps during 1906. In a few cases they made 
sincere efforts to do so. In most of the provinces, 
however, the military forces are still chaotic, and the 
methods of drill and arming primitive. The one 
efficient army is that of Viceroy Yuan in Chi-li. This 
consists of six divisions, with a seventh division 
partially formed. The Chinese official estimate of 
the number of this army is about seventy thousand. 
Some foreign military experts, who have exceptional 
opportunity forjudging, have placed the actual number 
of soldiers in Chi-li as low as fifty thousand. I myself 
believe that*the actual number is about sixty thousand. 
The Chinese, like many other Orientals, are apt 
to magnify their own figures. This was strikingly 
shown in the much-discussed military manoeuvres in 
the autumn of 1905. It was announced then that 
between forty and fifty thousand troops took part in 
the manoeuvres. Two foreign experts, friends of my 
own, made careful calculations of the numbers of the 
troops. Their estimates, arrived at independently, 
almost tallied. There were actually present 20,000 
infantry, 1,200 cavalry, 1,100 engineers, 1,300 artillery, 



2i 4 THE UNVEILED EAST 

with somewhere between 108 and 120 guns. This 
made an actual total of 23,600. 

There are to be two divisions in each of the pro- 
vincial army corps, as a beginning. Each division is 
to be composed of two brigades of infantry, one 
regiment of cavalry, one regiment of artillery, one 
section of engineers, and one transport section. A 
division will thus work out as follows : 

Officers, warrant officers, and writers . . 748 
2 brigades of infantry — 

4 regiments, or 12 battalions, each 526 men, 

with certain additional men . . . 6,400 
1 regiment of cavalry — 

3 ying or squadrons, each 363 men . . 1,089 
I regiment of artillery — 

3 ying or line batteries, each 568 . . . 1,704 
54 guns 

1 ying engineers 526 

1 ying transport 526 

Total 10,993 

Li Hung Chang attempted, with very imperfect suc- 
cess, to create a body of foreign- drilled troops. The 
real beginning of the present army in Northern China 
was made in the spring of 1894, just before the 
close of the Chino-Japanese War, by Hu Yun-mei, 
since Director- General of Railways in Northern China. 
It was then called the Ping-Wo-Wo-Chung, its head 
quarters were at Hichang, and it consisted of five 
thousand men — infantry, artillery, cavalry, and some 
pioneers. It was placed under the instruction of Mr. 
Schaller, who for many years had been at Shan-hai-kwan 
with General Yeh, and Mr. Munthe (now Colonel and 
Aide-de-camp to Viceroy Yuan), a Norwegian officer, 
who was in the Customs service under Sir Robert Hart, 



THE NEW CHINESE ARMY 215 

and volunteered to help the Chinese in the war against 
Japan, and was detached for military duty. 

In October, the same year, the head quarters were 
moved to a place only twenty-five miles from Tientsin, 
and Viceroy Yuan, then a Taotai fresh from diplomatic 
service in Korea, was made Director-General. Yuan 
proved to be a born soldier, and he threw himself into 
the work of creating a real efficient army. As time 
went on the men became more and more picked. 
They were properly fed, clothed, armed, and drilled. 
The officers for the first few years were mostly old 
students from the existing military schools at Tientsin, 
Shan-hai-kwan and Wei-hai-wei. In 1900 the troops 
were renamed the Hain-chien-nu-chien, or New Im- 
perial Army. Several German officers were engaged, 
and when Yuan was made Governor of Shantung he 
took his army with him. General Yuan soon demon- 
strated that he had a wonderful eye and aptitude for 
military matters. Three times a month he held grand 
parades of all arms, inspecting everything himself. 
The men were examined as to what they had learnt 
since the last parade, and no slackness was overlooked. 
" The Lord have mercy on the commanding officer 
whose soldiers were not up to the mark ! " said one of 
the old officers to me, in talking over that time. 
" The Viceroy would have none." 

There were three night field-services every month, 
and one great field-day for the whole army. Each 
commanding officer was expected to institute various 
field-days as well for his own individual units. The 
men were worked to a degree that might have caused 
even a German recruit to revolt. The force had been 
gradually increased to eight thousand men, and the 



216 THE UNVEILED EAST 

drill and discipline were, at that time, probably higher 
than they have been before or since in a Chinese force. 
The whole system of military training was founded on 
the German Army regulations, and it is these regula- 
tions which still form the basis of the new Chinese 
force. 

In 1900, the little army had an opportunity of 
proving its worth during the time of the Boxer rising. 
The Boxers were held well in hand in Shantung, and 
it is said that Yuan's men killed more of them than 
did the whole of the allied forces together. When 
Yuan was promoted to the viceroyalty of Chi-li, he 
again took his army with him, and the force has since 
been increased to its present total. During the first few 
years the discipline in Yuan's command was exceedingly 
severe. There was then only one punishment, instant 
decapitation, and this was applied for apparently the 
most trivial offences. Yuan realised that he had to put 
military discipline into men wholly unaccustomed to 
it. Many stories are told of his relentless methods. 
Some of these stories are possibly apocryphal, others I 
know to be true. A European was appointed military 
instructor to one branch of the army. Yuan had a 
talk with him before he began his work. "I want 
you," said Yuan, u to watch for the first opportunity 
you find of coming down on an officer for some offence, 
and we will have his head off. These officers need 
stiffening." 

At another time a high European official was 
inspecting the army with Yuan. A soldier failed 
to salute the foreigner, and Yuan noticed the omission. 
He sent an aide-de-camp to summon the unhappy 
private's officer before him. " Have that man's head 



THE NEW CHINESE ARMY 217 

off at once ! " was his brief instruction. The English- 
man, horrified, protested. " It's absurd," he cried, 
" to cut a man's head off because he forgot to salute 
me." Yuan was adamant. " I know my own busi- 
ness," he said in effect. " I know that I can only 
teach these men the lesson that they have to learn in 
one way, and I am going to do it." The man's head 
came off ! I noticed when, some time afterwards, I 
was visiting the Chi-li army that one never passed 
a soldier in the street, however far away from 
barracks or from his officers, but that he came promptly 
to attention and the salute. The lesson had evidently 
gone home. 

In addition to the death penalty, the military 
authorities now freely employ the bamboo as a means 
of discipline. This, as used in the army, is a very 
formidable weapon. The monotonous, light stroke of 
the stick on the bare flesh of the prisoner seems at 
first a trivial infliction. But as blow follows blow, 
always on the same spot, there comes first a great wheal, 
then torn skin, and then a raw pulp of quivering flesh 
and frayed muscle. The soldier who receives a hundred 
strokes with the bamboo knows his fill of torture. 

My first introduction to the army of Chi-li was at 
daybreak one morning, late in August, 1906, when I 
rode out to the big plain near the barracks of Paotingfu, 
the Aldershot of China. I had come as the guest of 
the Chinese Foreign Office, and the Viceroy himself had 
sent orders that I was to be shown everything I desired 
to see. The local authorities treated me with the 
greatest courtesy during my visit. I was housed in the 
old palace of Li Hung Chang, and the whole of the staff, 
so far as I could judge, did their utmost to tell me all 



2i 8 THE UNVEILED EAST 

I wanted to know. It did not take very long for me 
to acquire a very real respect for these Chinese Staff 
Officers. Their frankness, their kindliness, and their 
apparent sincerity left the best of impressions. Cynical 
Europeans will, of course, think to themselves that the 
whole of this frankness and apparent openness was a 
subtle disguise to deceive an innocent visitor. Perhaps 
so, yet this was not the first time by any means that I 
had had to deal with Mongolian officials. 

Early as it was on the August day at Paotingfu, 
thousands of men were already at drill. Away to my 
left, squads of recruits were acquiring the goose-step. 
One noticed that an infantry regiment, standing to 
attention in full marching order, was amply equipped 
with large trenching tools, every soldier carrying spade 
or pick. The clothing of the men, although somewhat 
looser than our military tailors would approve, was in 
good condition. I examined many of the rifles, 
bayonets, and guns, but I did not find one dirty. 

An infantry regiment first marched out and drilled. 
I have seen some of the crack corps of Europe on the 
parade ground, but I have never seen better drill than 
by these men. The long lines were mathematically 
straight. There was no sagging and no confusion, and 
the companies marched like one great iron machine. 
As they swung past with their flat-footed German step, 
there was an erectness, a cohesion, and an evident 
discipline which proclaimed the making of real soldiers. 
Changing front and changing formation were done in 
every possible way, and with incredible rapidity and 
exactness. 

The infantry marched on and went from sight behind 
a slight ridge. Suddenly they reappeared. They 



THE NEW CHINESE ARMY 219 

poured over the mound and spread themselves out. It 
was evident that they were about to attack a house and 
a wood a thousand yards ahead. The long line of 
skirmishers automatically took the right distances man 
from man, and the front line had scarcely emerged 
from cover before it was pouring volley after volley 
into the enemy. Now, by short, sharp rushes, the men 
had covered half the distance, and were kneeling and 
firing ahead. Their supports and reserves had already 
come out from the shelter of the ridge. 

Another rush and stiJl another followed, and the 
front skirmishers were flat on their stomachs, close to 
the supposed foe. - Then, as though by magic, supports 
and reserves were merged into the centre of the line, a 
great cheer burst from the ranks — a harsh " Haw ! " that 
seemed to tear the air — and the soldiers leaped to their 
feet, split into two parts, and rushed the house and 
wood at the point of the bayonet. 

The infantry had not yet finished. As I approached 
them, in company with the general, they reformed 
ranks, with the briefest pause, and swept back past us 
at the double. 

A regiment of cavalry, mounted on little chestnut 
Chinese ponies, displayed the same qualities of discipline 
and training as the footmen. They first did a clean 
bit of mounted infantry work, advancing on foot in 
open order upon a position. Then they went through 
an old-time cavalry charge. They divided into two 
parts, each riding to the opposite end of the plain. Then 
they turned, and with officers to the front and swords 
drawn they came straight at one another. Faster and 
faster they rode, nearer and nearer they drew, until the 
roar of the beating hoofs filled the air, and a great clash 



220 THE UNVEILED EAST 

seemed inevitable. A mighty shout burst from either 
half. At the last possible moment each side made a 
slight curve, and the excited ponies tore by each other 
in safety. When the men rejoined the forces, they 
practised silent drill, making the ponies gallop rapidly 
but so quietly that not the beat of a hoof could be 
heard. 

It was easy to satisfy oneself here that the Chinaman 
of the north is a born horseman. When he improves 
his mount, he will be still more efficient. The Chinese 
pony, while amazingly hardy and very fast, is too light 
for shock tactics, and not intelligent enough for the 
best cavalry work. The authorities recognise this, and 
they are making experiments on a large scale at the 
present time, crossing the native pony with larger 
breeds. Up to the present, the most hopeful experi- 
ments have been with Australian horses. 

The main criticisms that I had to make were 
insufficient practice with ammunition, a tendency to 
crowd the troops, and a weakness in reconnoitring 
work. The Krupp guns, for instance, were clean, 
and handled well, but they are all too seldom used 
with actual charges. The practice allowed for infantry 
is only one hundred and seventy rounds per man, 
the question of cost being, no doubt, largely re- 
sponsible for this. Each division has to be maintained 
for about one and a half million taels, or ,£230,000, a 
year. This is not much for a force of twelve thousand 
men. But to economise in ammunition is a veritable 
spoiling of the ship for a ha'porth of tar. 

I was shown the gymnastic training of the troops. 
This is the pride of the Chinese military administrators, 
and is certainly remarkable. It is done in the open air. 



THE NEW CHINESE ARMY 221 

A large squad of men went through their drill for me, 
and I was assured that they were only practising the 
regular routine which every soldier in the ranks must 
complete. First there was some pretty vaulting and 
horizontal-bar work. Jumping and climbing followed. 
Then came leaping over trenches, about thirteen feet 
wide. At pole jumping, they cleared tapes nine feet 
high. They climbed a-top of wooden uprights, some 
men scaling up ropes and others running up per- 
pendicular poles, eighteen to twenty feet high, in the 
nimblest fashion. Then they raised themselves on their 
hands, with feet high in the air, and jumped to the 
ground. One fellow climbed to the top of a giant's 
stride, that must have been quite thirty feet high, 
raised his feet aloft and came down with a jump. 

Finally, there was a great obstacle race. The men, 
in threes and fours, first leaped over a line of low 
bushes. They then ran along the thin edge of plank- 
ing, placed over a ditch, and leaped over a thirteen foot 
trench on the other side. A wooden wall, eight feet 
high, with castellated top, had next to be scaled, and 
when it was vaulted a stone wall of the same height 
awaited them. Then came a trench, about eight feet 
deep, into which they had to plunge, climbing up 
the other side. Finally, they mounted a slight earthen 
fortification. The time in which many of the men did 
the whole thing was from thirty-five to forty seconds. 

These gymnastics are, I believe, foolishly severe. 
Work involving such strain must cause internal trouble 
among a proportion of the men. Constant jumping 
from great heights has a tendency to cause gatherings 
on the balls of the feet and to strain certain tendons 
of the leg. The staff officers defended the exercises 



222 THE UNVEILED EAST 

warmly, when I told them what I thought, declaring 
that by gradual practice they made the men so hardy 
that no evil results followed. Independent inquiries 
made by me afterwards satisfied me that my strictures 
were justified. With longer experience, the authorities 
will modify some of their exercises. It speaks volumes, 
however, for the physique of the men that results such 
as I have given can be obtained. 

In the barracks themselves three things impressed 
me — the universal cleanliness, the flowers, and the 
schools. The barrack-rooms were not large, and the 
privates are not even supplied with separate beds, but 
sleep together on long wooden benches. But there 
was everywhere the most perfect cleanliness. The men 
are compelled to take baths two or three times a week. 
The rooms were spotless. At every possible place in 
the barracks flowers were planted, many of them the 
familiar flowers of our own English gardens. The 
way they were tended showed that the Chinaman does 
not allow militarism to crush out his aesthetic instincts. 

The schoolmaster is abroad at Paotingfu. Every 
soldier in Yuan's army goes to school. In the class- 
rooms for non-commissioned officers, I examined with 
considerable astonishment the exercise-books. The 
geometrical plans, the neat drawings of entrenchments, 
the diagrams for land-surveying, and the advanced 
mathematical work were proof enough that the brain 
as well as the body of Yuan's soldiers is receiving full 
attention. 

There is also at Paotingfu a large Military Academy, 
and a Staff College for officers. The Military Academy 
will give cadets a seven years' course of training. 
After two or three years of academy work the cadets 



THE NEW CHINESE ARMY 223 

are drafted in the army, where they serve for a time 
as private soldiers, before returning to complete their 
studies. In the academy itself a high standard of 
work, both physical and mental, is maintained. Owing 
to the great demand for officers, however, a large 
number of students leave Paotingfu before they can 
complete their full course of studies. 

The army of Chi-li is the only positively efficient 
fighting force in China. Viceroy Chang Chih Tung 
has a smaller modern-trained force, but the accounts 
that have come to me from outside observers lead 
me to doubt if he could put two fully trained divisions 
in the field. The army of Chi-li, when fully formed 
with ten divisions and reserves, will consist of about 
a hundred thousand fighting men in barrack, and a 
quarter of a million ready to be called up. The 
Viceroy is now devoting special attention to the 
creation of a reserve. When General Fukushima 
of the Japanese staff visited Northern China, he 
summed up his criticism in a picturesque sentence : 
"You have a beautiful lake, now you want an ever- 
flowing river." His meaning of course was that an 
army which is not periodically renewed by systematic 
recruiting, and has not abundant reserves to fall back 
upon, is of no use. Yuan realises this. 

Is the new Chinese army likely to be in the immediate 
future a menace to other nations ? Theorists, without 
knowledge of things as they are, have argued that if 
an efficient fighting force of sixty thousand men can 
be brought into being in a short time in one corner 
of China, it only needs a general application of the 
same system all over the country to create an army 
of ten or fifteen millions. Japanese jingoes have 



224 THE UNVEILED EAST 

painted the future of such an army, led by Japanese 
officers, marching in triumph over Europe, and bringing 
the "yellow blessing" to our benighted shores. 
European alarmists, overawed by the same vision, 
have expressed similar fears. 

If raw human material were all that is necessary 
for this, it might be done. But there are other factors. 
The Chinaman differs from the Japanese in that he 
is naturally a lover of peace, and not a fighter. In 
Japan we find a nation of born warriors, sensitive, 
proud, keen to detect offence, even where none is 
meant, and fearless in resenting it. The traditions of 
many generations have fostered this martial spirit. 
The Chinese, on the contrary, are essentially traders. 
Despite outbreaks like the Boxer rising, and outrages 
by scum of the nation emigrated to South Africa, they 
are a law-abiding and quiet race. Even now they are 
only learning the art of war because they want to 
be prepared to defend their own land. Their 
philosophy and religion are opposed to campaigns of 
conquest. It is impossible for any one who really 
knows them to contemplate them, for a long time 
to come, save under foreign direction, entering into 
an aggressive war with other nations. When they 
fight, it will be with the weapons of commerce, the 
boycott and the trust. 

Then it must be remembered that, although the 
Chinese army has made incredible advances, it is not, 
and is not likely to be for many years, capable of 
resisting serious external attack. Even the army of 
Chi-li would crumble at once before Japan, the most 
likely quarter from which attack will come. Certain 
great weaknesses in the Chinese military organisation 



THE NEW CHINESE ARMY 225 

have not yet been removed. The fact that the army 
of each province is for all practical purposes a separate 
body, tells against efficiency. Thus the army of 
Viceroy Yuan has been up to now not so much a 
branch of the Chinese army as Yuan's army. His 
soldiers have been taught loyalty — but loyalty to 
Yuan. The Viceroy's photograph has hung on the 
walls of every barrack-room. His name has been on 
every man's lips, and his smile or his frown have 
meant success or disgrace. He and not the veiled 
and hidden potentate in the Forbidden City, has 
represented real power to the soldiers under him. 
This already is being changed. The Board of War 
in Peking is steadily fighting for greater power, and 
the Chinese soldiers recognise that their only hope 
of national territorial integrity is in centralisation of 
military control. The whole tendency of Chinese 
government is against the efficiency of such central 
control. Inspectors from Peking can be bribed and 
blinded, as they are when they go to some of the 
provincial forces to-day. Spoilsmen can share the pay 
of thousands of soldiers who exist only upon paper, 
as is still done. The power of each viceroy is so great 
that he must exercise preponderant weight and authority 
over the soldiers in his province. 

The army of Chi-li represents twelve years of 
strenuous work by a great genius. But despite its 
splendid drill, its admirable discipline, and the general 
honesty with which it is administered, it has some 
serious faults. Each division is differently armed 
from the others. There are many kinds of field guns. 
One division has thirty-five 7*5 Schneider-Canet guns 
— weapons so heavy that a team of twelve of the 

*5 



226 THE UNVEILED EAST 

heaviest American horses would be insufficient to drag 
one of them. There are at least six varieties of Krupps 
in the army, including the models of 1905, 1904, 
1888, and 1872. There are also 7*5 Japanese guns, 
Armstrongs, and Maxims. 

When we come to small arms, we find confusion 
still worse confounded. There are 1888-model 
Mausers, 1872-model Mausers, Mannlichers, a few 
Lee-Metfords, and even a few Lee straight-pulls, 
besides other makes. Some of these have again to 
be subdivided. Thus the 1888-pattern Mauser is 
made at various arsenals. It is said that the variations 
in different makes are such that the ammunition made 
in one yard will not fit the weapons made in other 
arsenals, although nominally the same model. 

The staff of the army are awake to the great 
disadvantages entailed by this lack of uniformity, and 
if they had money it would be easy to remedy it. 
But reforms are costly, and funds are not too plentiful. 
The Chinese people have a rooted objection to increased 
taxation, and have a way of showing their dislike which 
is far from pleasant to the powers that be. Viceroys 
are not allowed to add to their direct taxes — save 
licences — without special permission from Peking. In 
consequence, Viceroy Yuan is hampered by lack of 
money, and is likely to be so for some time to come. 
He could possibly raise all he needs by foreign loans ; 
but in the present temper of the Chinese people, any 
attempt to do so might cause a storm. 

The old type of Chinese officer was very often fat, 
lazy, and venal, and his courage was frequently, with 
much justice, called in question. He generally knew 
nothing of military affairs, having possibly been, not 



THE NEW CHINESE ARMY 227 

many months before, a minor official within a yamen, 
a commander of a ship, or a hanger-on to the apron- 
strings of the ladies of the court. When the Army 
Board in Peking drew up its regulations for the 
reformed forces, it considered it necessary to lay down 
in print the instruction that generals must not steal. 
Yuan has done much to remedy this state of affairs 
in his own army. I did not find one fat officer in 
his ranks. The order has gone forth that if an 
officer puts on too much flesh, he must go. I saw 
no opium-smoking, and, to touch on a more delicate 
matter, I saw much which led me to believe that 
Yuan has accomplished the greatest miracle of all — 
he has largely put down corruption among those under 
him. But even in Yuan's army the political officer can 
still be found. There are nominal generals so busy 
with political work that they must leave all duty to 
subordinates. Leading officers vary their military 
careers by civil administration. In other provinces 
this is still more so. Thus the general at Nanking is 
a civil mandarin. In the days of the American Civil 
War it was possible for a commander to be taken 
from farmhouse or country manor, and successfully to 
learn his duty in the field. Soldiering, however, has 
become so technical to-day that, if real efficiency be 
wanted, the trained expert must rule. The amateur 
soldier, like the amateur theologian or the amateur 
journalist, has seen his day. 

There is a group of very able and well-trained staff 
officers at Paotingfu. I had many opportunities of 
coming in close touch with them. Their keenness, 
the alertness of their minds, and their willingness to 
consider every new fact were quite un-Oriental. The 



228 THE UNVEILED EAST 

evening before I left the army, the staff entertained 
me at a banquet. I had already become very friendly 
with several of them, and our talk was free and frank. 
Their one great topic of conversation all the time, 
apart from the necessary polite questions, was military 
matters. They knew that I had seen actual war, if 
only as an observer, and they were evidently determined 
to obtain from me all possible information. One officer 
was keen on entrenchments. What kind of trenches 
had I found most effectual in actual warfare ? Why ? 
Where had I seen them used ? and so on. Another 
was eager to start a discussion on the use of common 
shell in covering an attack. A third was absorbed 
in the question of improving the size and the in- 
telligence of the Chinese pony by judicious crossing. 
Their interrogations were neither general nor vague, 
but went right to the root of things. In short, these 
men were alive to their profession. 

There could have been no greater contrast than 
between this and the spirit of the old Chinese officer. 
A recent instance will illustrate this. A friend of mine 
was in the district in Manchuria where a body of 
bandits was creating trouble. Troops were hurried 
out to capture them. The troops moved very 
leisurely, marched around three sides of the robbers, 
and then they allowed them to escape in the rear. 

My friend protested to the commanding officer. 
" You could easily have captured every man," he 
said. " You might have stormed the house they 
were holding, and they could have done very little 
against you." 

The officer leisurely knocked off the ash from his 
cigarette. " Of course we could have captured them," 



THE NEW CHINESE ARMY 229 

he said. <c But if we had stormed their position, several 
of our men would have been shot and maimed for life. 
They would have to leave the army, and go back 
to their villages to starve. They would receive no 
compensation from the Government. It was not worth 
while." 

There is one question constantly asked. How far 
is the Chinese army under Japanese control ? It is 
only necessary here to consider two forces, those of 
Viceroy Chang and of Yuan. Chang is undoubtedly 
a pronounced pro-Japanese, and both his soldiers and 
his arsenal are under Japanese direction. Not long 
since he made very large purchases from Japan of 
cast-off weapons. Some of these old guns have been 
brought up-to-date by having the year of their manu- 
facture carefully erased, and 1906 put in its place. 
There are also a limited number of Japanese assistants 
in Yuan's army, but they are employed to plan and 
advise, and have little actual control. One Japanese 
colonel occupies an important place on Yuan's personal 
staff. Japanese drew up the scheme of the entire 
autumn manoeuvres of the united Chinese armies, but 
the execution of their plans was left to Chinese. I 
found the Chinese military authorities exceedingly 
sensitive on this question of Japanese direction. They 
took every opportunity of denying stories of Japanese 
influence. The rulers of Northern China have deter- 
mined, so far as they can, to use the Japanese and 
then to put them on one side, as the Japanese them- 
selves did with European instructors. The Japanese, 
however, are very carefully establishing themselves 
wherever possible. Strong diplomatic pressure is at 
work to keep Japanese officers in the Chinese service 



230 THE UNVEILED EAST 

even when the Chinese would rather have them go. 
My own opinion is that rather too much has been 
made of the Japanese control of Yuan's force. I 
certainly could not imagine a more dangerous or more 
undesirable thing from the European point of view 
than that the Chinese army should completely fall 
under Japanese dominance and direction. 

Two years ago the Japanese had the opportunity 
to secure predominance in the Chinese armies. But 
they played their cards badly. They showed them- 
selves somewhat grasping, and too eager for their own 
gain. Yuan bought several millions' worth of arms 
and ammunition from them. When I was in Tientsin, 
one batch of eight hundred thousand cartridges was 
being returned to Japan, as it was said that only about 
one cartridge in three would fire. The Chinese army 
of to-morrow will be Chinese led, although for some 
years there will be abundant room for special foreign 
military instructors. 

The Chinese soldiers are, and will be, conscripts. 
The magistrate of each district is told that he must 
supply a certain number of men, and the method of 
finding them is left to him. The soldiers are supposed 
to serve for three years with the colours, three 
years with the first reserve, and four years with the 
second reserve — or ten years in all. The soldiers 
are paid a nominal four or four and a half taels a 
month (i2j\ to 14J.) — very good pay for China. 
Recently various deductions have been made which 
reduce the actual money handed over to about two 
taels. 

There has been much talk of creating a new Chinese 
navy. The present idea of the Chinese authorities 



THE NEW CHINESE ARMY 231 

is not to proceed with a large scheme of naval re- 
construction immediately. A few cruisers are being 
built in Japanese yards, but the leading spirits in 
Peking are in favour of concentrating expenditure on 
military efficiency for the time. What China mainly 
wants to-day from the naval point of view, is a group 
of fast, small cruisers that can be used for the sup- 
pression of coast piracy. 



CHAPTER XVII 

THE OLD ORDER PASSETH 



?33 



CHAPTER XVII 

THE OLD ORDER PASSETH 

PEKING has transformed itself. Not many years 
ago, the Chinese capital was known as the most 
uncomfortable of all great cities. The land journey 
up from the Taku forts was long and trying ; Peking 
hotels had world-wide reputation for their unpleasant 
features ; the people were often openly offensive to 
strangers ; and the streets were so bad that men would 
sometimes sink bodily in mud holes in the middle of 
the main avenues, during wet weather. 

The road to the new Peking is now easy. Broad- 
gauge trains, with palace cars, luxurious easy-chairs, 
and sumptuous dining accommodation, await the pas- 
senger. Swift rickshaws have taken the place of the 
slow and springless Peking carts. There is at least 
one first-class hotel near the railway terminus. The 
main thoroughfares of the city are well paved, straight, 
broad, and easily traversed ; the old plague of beggars 
has abated ; and the people are civil and obliging. 
Despite the frequent sand-storms and the summer 
heat, the climate of the capital is, on the whole, bracing 
and delightful. 

In Peking, modern history dates from the Boxer 

uprising. Old residents declare that Peking has 

been spoiled by recent changes. The railway has 

brought globe-trotters ; the old class of Legation 

235 



236 THE UNVEILED EAST 

retainers has largely disappeared ; the shops have never 
recovered from the looting ; and the foreign quarter 
has become offensively modern. There remains 
plenty, however, to keep the stranger content. The 
streets are a panorama of national life. Now a train 
of camels, laden with goods from the Mongolian up- 
lands, moves in stately fashion down the roadway ; 
then a wedding procession, gay with bannermen and 
music, comes into sight. In one quarter you see the 
wives of Manchus, moving freely and without restraint, 
as becomes the women of the conquering race ; in 
another part you find few but men on the streets, for 
their stricter Chinese custom prevails. The great city 
walls of incredible thickness, the many port-holes over 
the main gate, each with an eye painted on its shutter 
telling of watchfulness, the moats, and the high towers 
around bespeak a nation still on the defensive. 

Peking is divided into four parts — the Tartar city, 
the Chinese city, the Imperial City, being the collec- 
tion of imperial palaces and dwellings, of which the 
Forbidden City is part, and the Legation quarter. 
The Tartar city is the city of gardens, all the well-to-do 
officials there having extensive grounds surrounding 
their homes usually full of flowers and trees. In 
the Chinese business quarter, the English shopkeeper 
could obtain some new ideas for displaying his wares. 
The roads here are packed with dense humanity, 
making it often difficult to move. Each shop front 
is an attempt to rival the glories of the others. 
Elaborate wood-carving, gilded poles, black and gold 
and red, twenty feet high and stuck in the roadway 
in front of the shops, attract the passer-by. But even 
here new fashions are coming in. One establishment 



THE OLD ORDER PASSETH 237 

that draws never-failing crowds has plate-glass windows 
and brilliant lights after the manner of Edgware Road, 
and makes a brave show of imitation diamonds. 
Apparently it does a great trade. 

The Boxer uprising has left its scars everywhere, as 
bad illness graves the face of man. On the outer 
wall one sees whole strips of the parapets taken away. 
The stones were commandeered by the soldiers of one 
of the Powers during the occupation, to build their 
Legation. The famous astronomical instruments on 
the wall disappeared when the foreign troops came, and 
several of them now add to the exuberant ornamenta- 
tion of Berlin. Some, however, that were taken by 
the French have since been restored by the French 
Government, and are now in place again. The 
splendid white marble palaces around the Altar of 
Heaven, where the Emperor goes to worship, are 
to-day stripped, for white soldiers lived in them, and 
looted them thoroughly. Even the famous Llama 
Temple, where Sir Henry Norman penetrated some 
years ago at the risk of his life, is now open. The 
Japanese soldiers in 1900 taught the Llamas civility 
by shooting some of the most troublesome. When I 
went through it the only danger was not to my life, but 
to my pocket, for the monks are shameless beggars. 

The Legation quarter is transformed. After the 
great siege the Powers determined not to be caught 
napping again. A large part of the indemnity money 
obtained from China has been spent on erecting 
elaborate Legations and barracks for troops. Germany 
has a real fortress, with moated sides and sloping 
walls and abundant artillery ; Italy rivals France ; 
and countries like Holland have built palaces. 



238 THE UNVEILED EAST 

America can boast the ugliest and most unsuitable 
Legation, and England the most artistic. England is 
content, and wisely, with the beautiful old Chinese 
palace which so long served us. Even some of the 
missionaries have caught the fever of display. The 
great Catholic cathedral, erected as reparation by the 
Chinese, is a grief to every loyal Manchu. One 
American missionary society has built for itself a 
hospital and homes which rival the Legations. 

The Marconi mast, showing above the Italian Lega- 
tion, the many soldiers of many nations in the streets, 
and the heavily guarded gateways of the ministerial 
quarters, all tell their tale of uncertain outlook. The 
West is in Peking by sufferance, and knows it. A 
very little, a short spell of famine, the rise of a real 
leader for the anti-Manchu party, the uncertainty 
following the death of the Dowager Empress, or 
something as yet unsuspected, may again bring the 
anti-foreign movement. The schools that one sees 
in the main streets, the movements of the newsmen, 
the publication of the reform journals, and even the 
rise of European trained officials into favour, could do 
little if such an outburst came. 

The sights of the Forbidden City, the home of the 
Dowager Empress and the Emperor, may well make 
one pause. The fine wall facing the British Legation 
— yesterday the centre of the hottest fighting — the 
beautiful pagodas on the rising mounds, and the yellow 
roof of the imperial buildings make a picture of im- 
pressive beauty. Behind those walls rests the most 
tragic figure in modern history, Kwang-sii, Emperor 
of China, the man who tried to hustle the East and 
failed. Between those walls, too, is being fought out 



THE OLD ORDER PASSETH 239 

to-day the battle between reactionary and progressive 
officials. Here the viceroys and the governors, the 
members of the Grand Secretariat, the Privy Council 
of China, the members of the Boards, the bureaucratic 
chiefs, and the Censors, the ears and the eyes of the 
Dowager Empress, debate and intrigue. I should feel 
hopeless indeed if I believed that the progress of 
reform in China depended upon the bureaucrats of the 
Forbidden City. The flood of the new movement is 
carrying them on, but in many cases it is carrying them 
on against their will. The vast hosts of place-hunters 
and sinecurists are at bay ; the thousands of officials 
whose bread is threatened are naturally up in arms ; 
the palace eunuchs, a power behind the throne by 
no means to be despised, know that progress must 
involve the destruction of their caste.. The men 
like Viceroy Yuan, who are leading reform, meet 
their fiercest resistance in the Palace of the Dowager 
Empress, although not from the Empress herself. 

Contradictory edicts, bearing the imperial seal, mark 
the triumph now of this faction, now of that. From 
the day when the Dowager Empress re-entered Peking, 
and showed herself to Europeans at the great gate of 
the Tartar City, she has revealed a readiness to face 
the facts of the new era. But it cannot be surprising 
if at times her purpose wavers. To-day she is moved 
by a pitiful story of the dangers hovering over the 
Czar, and her advisers urge on her to mark from the 
example of Russia what comes of yielding to popular 
clamour ; to-morrow translated cuttings from some sub- 
sidised newspapers of baser sort are shown to her, and 
she is urged to note and beware of the real opinion of 
the white people ; now a petition from a great scholar, 



2 4 o THE UNVEILED EAST 

full of warning and of dimly hinted threats of national 
peril, casts a shadow over the throne ; and now idealists 
come forward with reforms that would produce revolu- 
tion in a week. One councillor urges that a great national 
fund shall be raised, and the foreigners paid back all 
that has been borrowed from them ; another pleads 
that picked youths shall be sent abroad by the 
thousand for three years ; a third maintains that 
no nation without representative government is great, 
and demands the immediate calling together of a 
Chinese Parliament. There is an endless stream of 
talk. Something must be done, if China is to save 
her national integrity. What shall that thing be ? 

You notice that two men, long familiar attendants, 
have disappeared. Where are they ? They were 
accused yesterday of giving information to the Japanese, 
and their heads are now off. To-day there is strife in 
all the Council Chambers. It is nothing very much. 
Progressives and reactionaries have had a tussle over 
the appointment of a young American trained official 
to a post in the Board of Communications, and the re- 
actionaries have won. The underlings of the bureau- 
cratic world thrill with the triumph of their masters. 
They already see visions of Peking restored to its old 
glory again, with railways destroyed, Legation buildings 
levelled, and foreigners banished. 

But the world still moves. Each stage of the fight 
finds the reformers further advanced. The reaction- 
aries get the ear of the Dowager Empress and secure 
the restoration of Confucian studies. But they do not 
dare to ask that foreign learning shall be put on one 
side altogether, so that even with reactionary gain 
there is great advance. And reform does not depend 



THE OLD ORDER PASSETH 241 

on these men. They can help it very much or they 
can hinder it somewhat ; but the real force for progress 
in China comes from reviving nationality. The great 
merchant groups of the Kwang-tung, the foreign- 
trained officials, the people who remember the after- 
math of the Boxer trouble are sweeping the nation 
onwards. Reaction in the Forbidden City may check 
them for a time, but it can no more permanently pre- 
vent progress than could Canute at his word send back 
the rising sea. 

It is almost certain that in the early future there 
will be considerable changes in the Government organi- 
sation. The present system of the Grand Council is 
likely to be merged into a Cabinet, with a more or less 
responsible Premier. Under the Cabinet there will be 
a series of departments of State, and every effort will 
be made to diminish the present power of the viceroys 
and governors, and to increase that of the central 
administration. Thus the various Viceregal armies 
are gradually being merged into one national force. 
Taxation is to become more and more a national than 
a provincial matter, and the viceroys are to be more 
under the control of Peking. There will be very 
strong resistance to this. It seems improbable that 
there will be any immediate attempt to establish 
representative government, despite the strong advocacy 
of many influential men. 

The real centralisation of Chinese Government has 
never up to now been possible, owing to the great 
difficulties of travel. Every viceroy, save those near 
Peking, occupied the same happy position that our 
Eastern representatives had in the days before the 
telegraph. They were so far away, and it took so 

16 



242 THE UNVEILED EAST 

long to reach them, that the Government had to leave 
them to their own devices. To-day the railway and 
the telegraph are changing that. Before many years 
every viceroy will have the orders of the Government 
on his desk within an hour of their signature in Peking, 
and every viceroy will know that the central army can 
come down on him within a few days, however far he 
is, if he dares disobey. 

The Forbidden City has one cloud ever over-shadow- 
ing it. The Manchu rulers are always threatened 
rebellion. The great revolutionary societies, aiming 
to put a Chinaman on the throne, are unceasingly 
active. Time after time it has seemed as though the 
moment was ripe for them ; time after time they have 
nearly completed their plans. Those who know least 
about the secret revolutionary movement in China are 
willing to say most. Its agents are everywhere ; its paper 
armies and its nominal generals make a brave array ; 
there are money, brains, and energy behind it, and at 
least one Great Power is coquetting with its leaders. 

What is to come within the next year in Peking? 
I for one would be loath to say what may come within 
three months. It is as though men were standing in a 
region of earthquakes when the deflecting needle por- 
tends trouble. All may be well, and nothing but a few 
minor vibrations may follow, but equally the real crash 
may be almost upon us, and the next hour may see the 
fairest structures a mass of ruins. These things lie in 
the laps of the gods. 





f 




I **""" 



CHAPTER XVIII 

THE NEW WOMAN 



243 



CHAPTER XVIII 

THE NEW WOMAN 

ONE of the most convincing signs of the reality 
of the Western movement now passing over 
the Far East is the extent to which it is affecting 
the home life and the status of women. 

I was waiting on a recent summer afternoon in a 
bookseller's shop in Tokyo, when a typical Japanese 
girl of the old style entered. She was dainty, fresh- 
looking, graceful, and altogether charming, and was 
dressed in orthodox native style, with a simple kimono 
of crepe, an ornamental obi around her waist, and 
white tabis (cloth shoes) on her otherwise bare feet. 
She had no hat, no corsets, no stockings, and no 
leather boots. 

She went up to the shopman and, to my surprise, 
timidly demanded a copy of the Ladies Home Journal, 
an American domestic and fashion monthly. When 
she had gone, I turned to the bookseller. 

cc Why does she buy such a paper ? " I asked. 
c< She does not even wear foreign clothes." 

" Many Japanese ladies buy foreign fashion 
magazines," the bookseller replied. "They cannot 
afford to have European clothes, but they want to 
have them, and they want, at any rate, to know all 
about them." 

That dainty little woman was one of the multitude 
245 




Railways open 
Railways under construction 
Railways projected 
Capital Towns ffl 

Boundaries 

Chief Ri 



(F. A. McKenz, 



246 THE UNVEILED EAST 

in her own land who are feeling the impulse from the 
West to broader life. The existence of the Japanese 
woman living in Japanese style is not a happy one. 
The man still does his best to keep her in the back- 
ground. It is inculcated into her from childhood 
that she is the inferior of man, and that her primary 
virtues are obedience and family loyalty. The Govern- 
ment will not permit women even to attend political 
meetings, lest politics should injure their domestic 
graces. When an Anglo-Japanese society held a 
dinner in Tokyo last year, the Japanese — leading 
men in the community — were especially requested to 
bring their wives. Most of them did not do so. 
One still sees, in the foremost hotel in Tokyo, 
Japanese daughters and wives standing around their 
seated fathers and brothers in the lounge after dinner. 
What is woman that she should sit uninvited in the 
presence of man? 

Marriage in Japan is a matter not of love, but 
of business. The Japanese idea of morality is radically 
different from our own. It is still legitimate to sell 
your daughter to a life of shame for your own profit. 
A wife is a convenience, not a comrade and a helper. 
One of the most tragic features of Japanese life to-day 
is the manner in which young girls of the better 
classes, after being given a liberal education, and 
after absorbing the ideals of the West, are married 
to men steeped in ancient customs. They submit, 
obey, and often enough break their hearts in their 
obedience. In the poorer classes one sees at every 
turn illustrations of the weakness of family bonds. 
A lady of my acquaintance, living in Kobe, had a 
Japanese as her " Number one boy," ue, chief servant, 



THE NEW WOMAN 247 

and the man's wife as her personal maid. The wife 
did not give satisfaction, and when leaving Kobe 
on a visit abroad my friend told the husband so. 
Before returning home again she received a letter 
from the boy. He was sorry, he wrote, that his 
former wife had not pleased his mistress, so he had 
divorced her and married another, who he was sure 
would be in every way suitable. 

The condition of things among the Japanese 
peasantry abroad was described by Mr. Carroll D. 
Wright, the United States Commissioner of Labour, 
when examining life in Hawaii. " So far as private 
morals are concerned," he wrote, " the Japanese of 
the labouring class immigrating into Hawaii are 
practically in a state of nature — the ideals and con- 
ventionalities of the West simply do not exist among 
them. Marriage is a business contract, and many 
women arrive in Honolulu to meet husbands whom 
they have never seen. They have been practically 
purchased by friends or agents of the latter in the 
home country, and, feeling free to observe a different 
custom in a new land, promptly desert the men if 
they do not meet with their approval. Much loose- 
ness in the sex relations results." 

Already one finds in Japan a great change coming 
over an appreciable section of the people in the cities. 
The Japanese woman is rapidly waking up. Some 
of the more educated and enlightened are adopting 
Western home life. You can now in the first- 
class railway carriages come across Japanese husbands 
caring for their wives and children in public as care- 
fully as any European husband could do. The 
educational schemes that have been carried on among 



248 THE UNVEILED EAST 

better-class Japanese women for some years are now- 
yielding splendid results. Men who have absorbed 
Western knowledge or who wish to imitate the West 
are realising that they must begin at home, and the 
stronger of the women themselves are quietly insisting 
on change. The old ideal of a wife, submissive, 
retiring, never seen and never heard outside her 
kitchen and her nursery, save when called into the 
presence of her lord, is becoming dim. In this new 
era, women of the poorer classes have to work ; 
women of the middle class have often to enter into 
business enterprises ; and the men ambitious of public 
life are discovering that their wives can be their 
helpers. Thus, alongside of the old-style families — 
who are still naturally the vast majority — we have a 
growing, strenuous, and — may I add ? — charming section 
of high-class ladies, who are leading the way in 
education, in philanthropy, and in home life, and are 
blazing the trail for their more timid sisters to follow 
in marching towards a changed Orient. 

East of Suez, serious domestic trouble is often 
caused by the younger women absorbing European 
ideas of love. Most people who know anything 
below the surface of Asiatic life can tell story after 
story of tragedies and comedies due to this. In 
one Korean town familiar to me trouble came to two 
families in this way. Some energetic American lady 
missionaries had been giving the girls there Western 
teaching, and this teaching naturally included the 
study of modern literature. 

The daughter of one prosperous Korean, stirred to 
strange emotion by the new ideals revealed to her in 
the Western books, let her eyes fall upon the comely 



THE NEW WOMAN 249 

son of a neighbour. He was sixteen and the lady 
thirteen. She dared not permit him to look on her, but 
as he passed her home day by day she was ever peeping 
at him through a hole in the paper window. Then, by 
the ancient device of bribing an old servant, she sent 
him a little roll of rice paper with an affectionate 
message on it. He responded, and for weeks a 
passionate correspondence was kept up, the two never 
meeting. By some treachery, the correspondence was 
discovered. It was sickly, sentimental, mawkish stuff, 
worthy of a silly schoolboy and girl at home. The 
parents were heart-broken. The girl's father, wounded 
to the quick, declared hotly that he would rather have 
seen her dead at his feet. No greater affront to 
Korean respectability and convention could have been 
imagined than such conduct on her part. The lad, 
taxed with his offence, turned coward and declared 
that he never wanted to have anything to do with 
the girl, but that she had forced her letters on 
him. The girl was kept under close watch, and was 
soon afterwards safely married to another. 

In the second case the outcome was happier. The 
beginnings were very similar, the correspondence being, 
if I remember rightly, left under a stone for either 
to secure. When discovery came, the lad and the 
girl both declared that they would marry or die, for 
life would be worth nothing without one another. 
In the end, proper hymeneal go-betweens were called 
in and a marriage was arranged. The lad and his 
bride both determined to make other changes in 
their life. The young husband was learning to be 
a foreign-trained doctor. His bride insisted that he 
should go on with his studies, and, although she was 



250 THE UNVEILED EAST 

of good family, she took a place after her marriage 
as servant in a foreign household. She was quite 
frank about her reasons. She said that she wanted 
to earn money to help her husband to complete his 
education, and she also wanted to learn Western ways 
and Western housekeeping, in order that when they 
could afford a home of their own they might have 
a real one. I was a visitor in the home where that 
young wife served, and I shall be disappointed if in 
years to come, when returning to her own city, I 
am not asked to her own home, where she and her 
husband will be living out the life they are preparing 
for to-day. 

In China, the change in the life of the women 
is as yet confined to small sections of the country. 
There it is producing effects startling to those who 
know China as it was yesterday. Five years ago the 
daughter of a great man could not go outside her 
home save under escort and shielded from observation ; 
to-day you can see her riding in a public thoroughfare 
on a bicycle. Yesterday it was an offence to mention 
to a high official the name of his wife, to make any 
inquiries about her, or to seem aware of the fact 
that he was married ; to-day the official will sometimes 
invite you to his own home, where his wife will 
receive you and play the part of hostess. 

The European observer finds it difficult to describe 
fairly and justly the real home conditions of Chinese 
families untouched by modern ways. The dwelling- 
house itself is usually comfortable. I desire no better 
residence than the home of a prosperous northern 
official. Facing the street, one will find the stables 
and a central gateway leading to the outer courtyard. 



THE NEW WOMAN 251 

Around this courtyard are the dwellings of the 
servants. An inner gateway leads to the home. This 
may consist of three separate buildings arranged on 
three sides of a square, and with a flower-garden in 
the centre. To the back there will be another large 
garden, usually very well kept, and the whole place 
will be surrounded by high walls. In an ordinary 
Chinese town no house is of more than one story, 
so there is absolute privacy in these gardens, and 
even in the midst of a city one seems cut off from 
the outside world. The different houses in the 
compound are for the different wives. 

The great hindrances to happiness among Chinese 
women under old conditions are foot-binding, polygamy, 
and the power of the mother-in-law. The Manchus, 
the ruling caste of the country, do not permit their 
women to bind their feet ; but among the Chinese, 
the higher the class the more foot-binding has been 
indulged in. A lady of really distinguished family 
has such little stumps that it is impossible for her to 
walk, save when half-borne by attendants on either side. 

Even the Chinese working-woman hobbles along 
horribly. u Foot-binding means that our women are 
tortured every day of their lives," enlightened Chinese 
men will frankly tell you. Fortunately, this state of 
affairs, although almost universal now, is having a 
death-blow struck at it by the reform movement. 
For some years active Europeans fought their hardest 
to abolish the custom. Chinese sneeringly told them 
that they should first secure the abolition of tight- 
lacing among the women of England, a much more 
dangerous practice. Even those parents who were 
convinced of the harm of foot -bin ding dared not give 



252 



THE UNVEILED EAST 



it up, for a daughter with unbound feet would be 
neglected in the matrimonial market. Now, however, 
the Europeans are finding it no longer necessary to 
maintain Anti-Foot-binding Societies. During the last 
days of 1906 the main foreign organisation for that 
purpose, one which owed much to the zeal and energy 
of Mrs. Archibald Little, was dissolved, for the work 
is now being taken up by the Chinese themselves. 

In the old home the mother-in-law was chief. She 
ruled often enough with a rod of iron. A familiar 
symbolical picture by Chinese artists shows the mother- 
in-law, stern and frowning, standing with upraised 
stick while the daughter-in-law meekly and submissively 
crouches at her feet. To the tyranny of the old lady 
were added the jealousies, the bickerings, and the 
petty disputes of the wives among themselves. 

It is little wonder that these women, without employ- 
ment, without intellectual stimulus, and with little more 
to occupy their days than the care of their children, 
the colouring of their lips and cheeks, and the adorn- 
ment of their person, should take to opium-smoking 
for relief. Opium suicide among young Chinese 
wives is comparatively common. 

The life of the Chinese woman under the old 
conditions was miserable. She was born unwanted, 
for a son is a blessing, a daughter an incumbrance. 
The real state of affairs was brought home to me the 
first time I saw a Chinese wedding feast. These 
people love spectacular display, and never lose a 
chance of it. A marriage procession is always a 
great occasion. At this procession there were many 
musicians marching in front. Then followed banner- 
bearers and men carrying symbolical devices. The 



THE NEW WOMAN 253 

bride herself sat in a coach of state, in crimson, 
gold-spangled garments. A gilt and jewelled crown 
was on her head, with its hangings dropping over 
her face. But when I looked at the face of the little 
woman who was the centre of the procession, cowering 
in her seat, I forgot the gay trappings. Beneath the 
white-plastered cheeks, vermilion lips, and blackened 
eyelashes one saw shrinking and fearful eyes and 
wavering cheeks that brought to mind memories of 
the stag when, breathless, it has run its last lap and 
sinks to the ground, palpitating, quivering, and 
terrorised, awaiting the on-coming hounds. Little 
wonder. She was going to a husband she had never 
seen, and a mother-in-law who could, if she pleased, 
make her life an inferno. 

The old order is passing. The first great blow 
struck at it is by education. The new schools that 
are springing up in many parts are creating a new 
class of women. The lady of the north to-day is 
escaping outside the courtyards of her gilded prison 
and is emerging into a fuller life. Peking has its 
women's daily newspaper, run by women. The example 
of the Dowager Empress, the most masterful and 
dominant woman of our age, is being followed by 
her humbler sisters. One picture of home life under 
the newer conditions, as I saw it, may be more 
convincing than many general details. 

When passing through one of the great cities of 
the north, I found on returning to my rooms in the 
afternoon that a large envelope had been left there 
for me. The envelope was prettily ornamented with 
gold dragons, and had on the outside my Chinese name 
with the usual high-sounding honoriflcs. Literally 



254 THE UNVEILED EAST 

translated, the envelope was addressed to " Great Man 
Ma." On opening it I found a visiting card and an 
invitation in Chinese to dine, en famille, with the chief 
mandarin of the district. The letter said that an 
American official would be present with his wife, 
and also another mandarin from Pekin and his wife. 
I opened my eyes with amazement. The wives were 
to be present ! 

That evening when my rickshaw coolie wheeled me 
to the house I found yet another surprise. The home 
was two stories high — the only two-storied dwelling 
in the city. By building in this fashion the mandarin 
had proclaimed his defiance of the evil spirits of the 
air, who are supposed to be disturbed by a house of 
extra height. Had he attempted such a building ten 
years ago his bricks would have been torn down and 
his family would have been fortunate to escape with 
their lives. 

My host was of the usual type of high Chinese 
officials, cultured, courteous, and showing by his every 
act that he desired me to be at my ease among novel 
surroundings. But my attention was given mainly to 
my hostess, who stood ready to receive me, another 
Manchu lady by her side. No mother-in-law crushed 
her, and she was her husband's only wife. Her dress 
was the typical attire of the Manchus, the conquerors 
of China. Her robe was of silk, beautifully embroidered. 
Her hair was done up high, on a large frame stretching 
eight or nine inches above her head. Her feet were 
unbound, and she could walk freely. Her face was 
frank and open, and would have attracted attention 
in any London drawing-room. 

When dinner was served, the ladies all sat together 



THE NEW WOMAN 255 

at one end of the table and the men at the other. At 
first the Chinese ladies were a little shy. Then it 
transpired that they knew a few words of English, 
and we at once plunged into the inexhaustible language 
question. When the first shyness had worn off, the 
talk was as free and as genial as in a gathering of friends 
at home. What did we talk about ? My host spoke 
no English and had never been abroad, but he had a 
hundred subjects of conversation, from the price of 
motor-cars to the newest educational schemes. He 
was keen on modern changes, and showed a minute 
knowledge of English affairs which left me surprised. 
The ladies took an interest in everything. 

It was to be a European dinner that night, especially 
in my honour. At the beginning, as in duty bound, 
the host expressed his regrets for the poverty of the 
meal. " I am sorry that I have nothing fit for you to 
eat," he said. " My table is poor, as you see, and 
my fare is simple. But I trust that the mental feast 
from your conversation will atone for the lack of good 
things." I glanced at the table, and saw that it was 
weighed down with all manner of dainties. All the 
world knows the merits of the Chinese cook, and this 
evening the Chinese cook surpassed himself. First 
came a succession of English dishes — savouries, soup, 
fish, sausages, asparagus, fowl, and joint. Wise from 
former experience, I ate very little of each, for the 
number of courses in a Chinese dinner is so great that 
it would be impossible otherwise to take them all. 
To leave a dish untasted is serious impoliteness. 

Then the European cutlery was cleared away. " We 
thought you would like to taste some Chinese dishes," 
said my host. So silver-mounted chop-sticks came out, 



2 S 6 THE UNVEILED EAST 

and the Chinese dishes arrived. The rarest Chinese 
delicacies, birds'-nest soup and the like, could not be 
served, as they take three days to prepare, and the 
cook only had four hours' notice of my coming. The 
Chinese chicken was delicious, and the Chinese way 
of serving fish, fried crisply in small pieces and soaked 
in soy (a kind of Worcester sauce) would be hard to 
beat. Bamboo shoots I found a somewhat tasteless 
delicacy. But the crowning dish of all was sea slugs. 
A little thrill went through the guests as this royal 
dainty was brought on the table. My host heaped my 
plate, and politeness required me to eat. But my 
gastronomic education has not yet reached the point 
where I appreciate slugs. I gulped them down and 
smiled. But there was an inward shudder. 

Such is the menage of the Chinaman with the new- 
style wife. The barriers have been taken down from 
the home. In place of a group of animated dolls, kept 
in the background, he has a bright companion who 
shares his whole life. I do not claim that there are 
many such households yet, but their number is rapidly 
increasing, and the whole tendency to-day is towards 
their steady growth. Once the Chinese women open 
their minds, the men will not be able to revert to 
mediaevalism, even if they would. 



CHAPTER XIX 

A FIGHT FOR NATIONAL EXISTENCE 



257 17 



CHAPTER XIX 

A FIGHT FOR NATIONAL EXISTENCE 

WHEN in May, 1 906, Tieh Liang and Tang were 
made High Commissioners over the Maritime 
Customs those who knew China best realised that the 
movement of " China for the Chinese " had really- 
begun. 

Tang, the younger of these two men, is an interesting 
and picturesque figure. Tall, strong, and inscrutable, 
he brings to his work the knowledge and energy of 
the West and the purpose of the East. The old type 
of Chinese mandarin wore goggles, studied Confucius, 
and imagined that all the earth moved around Peking. 
Tang's eyes are wide open ; he speaks English fluently, 
and learned our business methods by residence in 
America. During the eleven months in which he 
kept his post he accomplished much. Then intrigues 
caused him to be ousted, and sent to Moukden as 
Governor. 

His home in Peking proclaimed the man. His big 
study was made for work. A large, long table gave 
him plenty of room to deal with documents ; his papers 
and books were arranged with the orderliness and pre- 
cision of an up-to-date insurance office ; and his hours 
were marked out between his different departments. 
His every movement denotes intense energy, and he 
has still youth on his side. He retains his Chinese 
259 



26o THE UNVEILED EAST 

dress, as do all the reform officials. Europeans describe 
him as " anti-foreign." He disclaims the title, but he 
would not deny the fact that he is doing his best to 
retain for China all that is her own, and to recover 
for her all that the foreigners have taken away. 

His best enemies do not deny him the merit of 
industry. He is a voracious toiler ; he filled many 
posts, impressing his own personality on them 
all. He is as strenuous in play as in work. In 
Tientsin they still tell the story of a German who 
came to the court of Viceroy Yuan seeking concessions. 
The German found many hindrances, and to pass the 
time he suggested that Tang, who was then a high 
official near Yuan, should learn the German game of 
scat, and play it with him. Tang gravely assented. 
At the end of the first day the German had to search 
his empty pockets for odd money ; at the end of the 
second day he found it necessary to cable home for 
further supplies. And he did not get his concession ! 

Tang has stood in the Far East for a definite 
policy. He is one of the moving spirits in the campaign 
for bringing the imperial Maritime Customs back 
under Chinese control. He makes no secret of this. 
" The Maritime Customs represent one of the most 
important of the financial assets of the Chinese Govern- 
ment," he said to me. " China desires power in the 
control of it." If his party succeeds in its purpose, it 
will inflict the greatest blow that British prestige has 
yet received in the Far East. 

Sir Robert Hart, old, feeble-bodied, yet strong of 
mind as ever, stands to-day as the supreme Briton in 
the Far East. The service which he has built up has 
for years been the admiration of the world. It has 




2 2 

o g 




A FIGHT FOR NATIONAL EXISTENCE 261 

placed the foreign trade of China on a stable basis ; 
it has maintained order in the ports ; it has suppressed 
corruption ; it has secured admirable water approaches 
for foreign shipping ; and, finally, it has given China 
a good postal service. It has spread over the land 
a large and capable body of officials, whose actions 
have been a constant incentive and reproach to the old 
native mandarins. 

To praise the Customs Service would seem to many 
like painting the lily. Every Englishman who has 
studied it is proud of it, and proud of the man at its 
head. But we cannot expect the Chinese to see this 
service quite in the same light as we do ourselves, and 
they do not. 

There is another side, of which we hear less, but 
which is ever in the Chinese mind. China is not 
content to see one of its most important departments 
controlled by a foreigner. The old school of Peking 
mandarins consoled themselves by the thought that 
the ? c I.G." (as the Inspector-General is universally 
known) and his aides were only servants, doing their 
behests. The new school know better. They com- 
plain of the feeble action of the Customs authorities 
at Chefoo and elsewhere when the Japanese came in 
and violated Chinese neutrality during the last war. 
They are deeply wounded by the fact that Sir Robert 
Hart has, so far as he could, excluded Chinamen from 
every high office in the service. All responsible posts 
are given to foreigners. Chinese are admittedly better 
business men than Japanese, yet under the present ad- 
ministration a number of Japanese have been appointed 
to leading Chinese Customs posts, while the Chinese 
themselves have been kept out. 



262 THE UNVEILED EAST 

There are other and more material reasons. Chinese 
officials would like a share of the well-paid offices. 
They complain that the present service is needlessly 
costly. Men, they say, are receiving £2,000 a year 
for duties which are little more than clerical. The 
reformers need money for their schemes, and need it 
badly. Such money, they believe, could be had from 
the Customs. 

I give the Chinese view of this matter because it is 
well that it should be known in England. The ap- 
pointment of Tieh Liang and Tang as High Com- 
missioners is only the opening move of the attempts 
that will be made to recover actual control of the 
service. Tang has, it is true, fallen out of favour, 
but his success or failure will not materially affect the 
determination of the Chinese to recover Customs 
autonomy. 

England holds the right to maintain one of our 
countrymen as Inspector-General of Customs under 
the guarantees for certain loans, and under the agree- 
ment between England and China that so long as 
British trade maintains its ascendency in China the 
Inspector-General shall be English. The Chinese have 
for some time been seriously discussing raising money 
among themselves to pay off the loans in order that 
they might clear the foreign officials away. This policy 
has been advocated with great vigour in the province 
of Honan and elsewhere, and the Government some 
time ago approved of the idea of raising a " Patriotic 
Fund " for the purpose. Appeals have been circulated 
promising reduced taxation and increased employment 
once the foreigner is in this fashion removed. 

Few, however, who know China will believe that 



A FIGHT FOR NATIONAL EXISTENCE 263 

such a " Patriotic Fund " will be raised. There is 
one simple obstacle in the way. The Chinese Govern- 
ment is scrupulously honest in its dealings with 
foreigners. It pays punctually and pays well. But 
it has not yet learned the necessity of paying interest 
on national loans to its own people. Internal loans 
have been raised before to-day, and the script was all 
that the lenders received in return. There is abundant 
money in China, but not for Government loans. 

The Inspector-General will remain for many years 
to come, and, unless we bungle even worse than we 
have done in the past, he will continue to be a British 
subject. But the power of the office is likely to be 
more and more curtailed. It is hard to see how we 
can prevent this, for it is an almost inevitable result 
of returning national confidence. A perhaps more 
serious outcome of the " China for the Chinese " 
movement will be the limitation of opportunities for 
the investment of foreign capital in the country. The 
maxim in Peking to-day is, " Grant no more con- 
cessions to the foreigner." Railways are to be re- 
covered from foreign investors, mining rights are to 
be closely scrutinised, and traction powers are to be 
kept at home. 

In this the Government is only echoing the popular 
sentiment. Newspapers, posters, and pamphlets issued 
all over the land tell some story. The literature of 
to-day is a literature of revolt, revolt against the 
dismemberment of China. Two specimens will give a 
fair idea of the nature of this present appeal to the 
people. 

The first is a circular, " issued by the warm-hearted 
people of Ipoh." It is a passionate protest against 



264 THE UNVEILED EAST 

the " cruel laws " made by America against the 
Chinese, and it calls on the people to maintain the 
boycott of American goods. It points to the success 
of the boycott, and asserts that " it is carried on in 
such a civilised manner that no excuse can be found 
for its suppression." 

" The foreigners have characterised us Chinese as 
being without patriotism and without unity," it says. 
" It is our duty to prove that this is not true. 
Mr. Chang, a wealthy merchant of Shanghai, left his 
great fortune uncared for in order to start the boycott. 
Mr. Fung, a young man of great talents, sacrificed 
his life for the purpose of encouraging his countrymen 
on. Mr. Liang, Chinese Minister at Washington, 
fought for the cancellation of the cruel exclusion laws 
at the risk of losing his appointment. 

cc Wealth, honour, and life are things we all care 
for. But these three gentlemen were quite ready to 
give them all up in order that they should help their 
own countrymen. Ought we not to respect their 
motives and avoid the disgrace of being called c cold- 
blooded creatures ' ? Boycott ! Boycott ! 

cc There are cold-blooded creatures of the lowest 
order who still buy American goods. Do not argue 
with them. Let all Chinese with warm blood flowing 
in their veins apply to these low beings the same 
method that they have done to American goods." 

The circular concludes with details of the marks 
on American goods, so that all can know them. The 
policy of the " black list " is as familiar in Cathay 
as in certain literary circles in London. 

The second piece of literature is a small pamphlet 
that was issued and circulated in immense quantities 



A FIGHT FOR NATIONAL EXISTENCE 265 

in the province of Honan. This province was up to 
quite recently the most bitterly anti-foreign part of 
China, and was noted for its bad treatment of white 
missionaries and travellers. Honan has been caught 
in the wave of reform and is mending its ways. 

The pamphlet is written in the most familiar 
colloquial Chinese in order to appeal to the common 
man. It is logical and able, and what we should 
call a masterly political appeal. It points out that 
China to-day is surrounded by many nations — Japan 
to the east, Russia to the north, England, France, 
Germany, America to the west. All of these are 
stronger than China, and they have all determined to 
steal Chinese territory. If a nation's land is gone, that 
nation is ruined. What can be done to stop them ? 

First, the Chinese must learn. There is not a 
foreigner who does not give twenty years to study. 
The women of foreigners carry books about with them, 
so that evidently even they can read. These foreigners 
study not the classics, but practical things. Technical 
education is their strength. Let China have technical 
education. 

Next, China has got to understand that in this world 
the strong oppress the weak. If a strong man 
tyrannises over a weak one, the weakling can appeal 
to his authorities. But if a strong nation oppresses 
another, there is none to appeal to, and the weaker 
nation perishes. How shall we avoid this destruction ? 
Only by making ourselves so strong that we can fight 
the foreigner. Therefore, every one ought to join the 
army, or help in forming volunteer bands. 

The Chinese woman must abandon foot-binding, and 
the Chinese man must put his opium pipe on one side. 



266 THE UNVEILED EAST 

China must be united. So long as there is no cohesion, 
China cannot stand. The writer uses the familiar 
illustration of the bundle of sticks to enforce this point. 
The Chinese must show increased mutual love for one 
another, each helping the other. 

The country must be opened up, but this opening 
must be done by the Chinese themselves, and not 
by foreigners. Why should China surrender the 
arteries of her national life by permitting men of other 
lands to build and own her railways ? If the foreigners 
have the railways, they bring their soldiers. What 
railways and mines are in the hands of foreigners must 
be got back, and kept by the Chinese themselves. 

Last of all the writer discusses the treatment of the 
foreigner in China. He points out that it is folly 
to attack foreign visitors who come to the interior 
preaching their religion, or trying to spread trade. 
Such acts show lack of wisdom. Every other nation 
permits free intercourse, and China cannot set herself 
against the world. To kill foreigners is to inflict 
injury on the Chinese themselves. Don't be afraid of 
the stranger, and don't injure him. Be peaceful and 
reasonable in all transactions, but make yourselves 
strong. With that appeal this remarkable production 
ends. 

This pamphlet may be taken as representing that 
great body of reform opinion in China to-day. I have 
never professed that the Chinese reformers are actuated 
by any special love for white men in carrying out 
their changes. In sober truth, they have no particular 
reason to love us. Here and there are European- 
ised officials who have Anglicised themselves, but the 
average reformer is keen on reform because he is 



A FIGHT FOR NATIONAL EXISTENCE 267 

desirous of maintaining the integrity of his nation. It 
would be a very unfortunate thing for his country 
if this were otherwise. 

The revolt against foreigners is directed against the 
Japanese quite as much as Europeans. It is a common 
delusion in the West that the Chinese and Japanese are 
peoples closely allied in sentiment and in ideals. 
Really there is as deep a gulf between them as between 
English and Hungarians. Two years ago China was 
carried away with a wave of admiration for the Japanese 
people, and Japanese influence was for the time supreme. 
This is no longer so, The Chinese sympathy has 
turned to distrust, and the Chinese people believe, not 
without reason, that Japan is aiming to take some 
of their territory from them. Japan is maintaining 
claims in Manchuria that are inconsistent with Chinese 
sovereignty in that country. There are signs, too, that 
the Japanese ambitions go even further. 

The most important question in world politics to- 
morrow will be whether China is to remain free and 
undivided, or whether a large part of its territory is to 
pass under the control of Japan. The answer to this 
question can, and should, be given by England. 

Those who forecast the future by engrossed treaties, 
and by the polite after-dinner speeches of diplomats, 
deny that such a question is likely to arise. People 
who look at acts rather than at spoken or written 
words may be excused for thinking differently. Japan 
is making the same preparations in China to-day as 
in Korea and Manchuria three years ago. The north 
is covered with Japanese secret agents. They are 
settled in every town ; they go through every rail- 
way train ; they are behind a large part of the new 



268 THE UNVEILED EAST 

journalism ; they are in the schools ; and they keep 
watch at every entrance-way to the important vice- 
regal yamens. This is not rhetorical description ; it 
is sober fact. 

Japan sees that disturbances will come, maybe in a 
few months, which will give her the right to exercise 
active military authority in Northern China. Japanese 
journals openly express their hope that when trouble 
comes Japan will be given the mandate of the Powers 
to maintain order. 

The condition of affairs in Manchuria to-day best 
illustrates what I mean. Every Chinese official whom 
I met in Manchuria was convinced that Japan intends 
to maintain predominance in that province. Whatever 
ambitions Russia had have been surrendered for the 
time, perforce, because of internal weakness. Japan 
is at the beginning of her strength. Chinese official- 
dom has been greatly hurt by the long delay of the 
Japanese in surrendering the control of Manchurian 
telegraphs, as they are bound to do. When I was in 
Japan in June, 1906, the Chinese telegraph commis- 
sioners, specially appointed to arrange the transfer, had 
been in Tokyo for a month, and had accomplished 
during that time absolutely nothing. c< We came here 
to do business,'' they said. " We have been splendidly 
entertained. Every day a banquet is provided for us ; 
every day there are carriages to take us to something 
arranged in our honour ; and every morning a Japanese 
official comes to know what more can be done for us. 
But we did not come here for feasts or excursions. 
We came to secure the return of our telegraphs. Japan 
will not do business about that." 

The Chinese are further uneasy on account of the 



A FIGHT FOR NATIONAL EXISTENCE 269 

manner in which Japan is establishing material rights 
of all kinds in Manchuria. Many thousands of 
Japanese citizens are settling in the interior. They are 
at Kirin, Harbin, and Chang-chung-fu. There are 
great colonies of them in Newchwang, Moukden, and 
Liaoyang, and there are smaller settlements in three 
hundred villages. All along the railways there are 
block-houses with Japanese soldiers in them. New- 
chwang has been nominally returned to the Chinese, but 
it has been returned under conditions which leave the 
Japanese supremacy almost unbroken, The Japanese 
require that the police shall be administered by Japanese 
subjects chosen by the Japanese Government. They 
have demanded that the water-works, electric power, 
and various other commercial concessions shall be in 
Japanese hands ; the Conservancy works are to be 
conducted in accordance with Japanese plans, and the 
great stretch of land taken for a Japanese settlement is 
to be kept by the Japanese. It is the same all over 
the province — everything the Japanese could lay hands 
on they have kept. 

The Chinese administrators say that all this can only 
have one meaning. " Unless we stir ourselves," more 
than one of them has told me, " Manchuria will pass 
from us. Mongolia will follow Manchuria, and then 
what can save our Empire ? " They are no longer 
afraid of Russia, but they are afraid of Japan. They 
distrust her intentions, and dread her friendship. 
When Japan offers them gifts, they fear either to 
accept or refuse. They remember what has happened 
in Korea, and how fair words and kind promises were 
the beginnings of national expropriation and extinction. 



CHAPTER XX 

CHINA AND FOREIGN TRADE 



271 



CHAPTER XX 
CHINA AND FOREIGN TRADE 

THE visitor who arrives for the first time at 
Shanghai by the sea route cannot fail to be 
amazed by the sight before him. You approach the 
city by miles of waterway, and long before reaching 
the wharf you pass many docks, mills, and factories 
of all kinds. There is endless shipping around, 
steamers flying the flags of all nations, great lines of 
Chinese junks, and the smart boats of the Chinese 
Customs Service. You land at a busy quay and find 
yourself immediately amid a throng of carriages, rick- 
shaws, and burdened coolies. The shops and hotels in 
front of you are worthy of a Western city. Shanghai 
covers over eight square miles of ground. Every- 
where one sees life, business, and prosperity, a strange 
commingling of East and West. And the predominant 
nationality is English. This is well shown in the 
shipping. In 1904 the flag of Great Britain floated 
over 2,069 steamers entering this port, 494 flew the 
German flag, 298 the Norwegian, 171 the Japanese, 
and 67 the American. 

Shanghai is significant of what is coming in the new 
Far East. China will soon be the greatest industrial 
market in the world. Four hundred and forty 
millions of people, civilised, clever, and alert, are 
swinging rapidly from mediasvalism to a front place 
273 1 8 



274 THE UNVEILED EAST 

in modern life. They want everything — railways, 
machinery, tools, ships, instructors, and guns. Their 
demand is just beginning. Already within less than a 
decade their foreign trade has doubled ; and the figures 
of to-day will be doubled and trebled again before 
many years are over. In the future, China as a great 
manufacturing nation may and will threaten our own 
commerce, but for many years yet she will be a buyer 
rather than a serious competitor. 

Who is to have this trade ? Twenty years 
ago, Chinese external commerce was almost wholly 
absorbed by England. It was a case of Britain 
first and the rest nowhere. This is no longer so. 
We are still first, and we still have assets of the 
greatest value ; but very powerful rivals, Germany, 
America, and Japan, are fighting us in a way we cannot 
ignore. 

German success is undeniable. The big German 
steamship lines, the Norddeutscher Lloyd and the 
Hamburg-American, have built up very profitable 
connections in both passenger traffic and freight, partly 
at our expense. German merchants are at every 
port, and everywhere their numbers are growing. In 
Tientsin, the great northern port, German business is 
now almost equal in value to British. In Eastern 
Siberia the common language for business is German. 

Why is this ? The main reason is not political 
influence, not tariffs, and not underhand methods, but 
sheer business application. The British merchant has 
an established connection. He feels that he can take 
things easy and enjoy the delightful social advantages 
of treaty-port life. He is keen on sport, and the 
autumn races are to him red-letter days ; he closes 



CHINA AND FOREIGN TRADE 275 

his office early, and is usually off at four or five in the 
afternoon ; he is a clubman, and club life in the great 
cities of the East is the most seductive of time-wasters. 
The merchant makes a good living, or keeps up his 
average of orders with the home firm, and is content. 
He does not see why he should toil at the language 
when he can employ a compradore, or why he should 
make his existence a round of exhausting duties. 

With the German it is different. He came with 
no established connection, and he has to fight for what 
he gets. You will find the lights burning in his office 
at nine or ten at night, and the clerks toiling over their 
books. He works harder and he works longer, and 
he goes out into the highways beating up trade. 
He studies Chinese, and insists that his subordinates 
shall study it. 

This knowledge of the language is of far more 
importance than may first appear. English business 
has been done through compradores — English-speaking 
Chinese, who act as the representatives and mouth- 
pieces of the foreign merchants. The compradore has 
of necessity acquired more and more power. He is 
often a splendid man, but, despite his merits, it is bad 
business to have your affairs arranged by another 
when you are on the spot to do them yourself. The 
Japanese, quick to seize strategic points, have abolished 
the compradore, and the Germans are working towards 
the same end. 

I should be sorry to give the impression that one is 
pessimistic about British trade in China. The British, 
as I have said before, are still first. The main cable 
service is English, and the principal banking facilities are 
ours. We still reap the enormous advantage of London 



276 THE UNVEILED EAST 

being the financial centre of the earth. The old 
Chinese merchant princes, like Jardine, Matheson, & 
Co., have their agents everywhere, and conduct their 
affairs on the scale of reigning powers. The best 
wharves, the best docks, the best river positions, and 
the finest offices fly the Union Jack. The British 
settlement is always the main business quarter, and the 
British club is ever the centre of life for the whole 
community. If we have grown somewhat slack, it is 
because of our own overwhelming prosperity. 

The German is our most serious white rival ; next 
to him comes the American. So far, American com- 
petition in the Far East has not reached the stage that 
might have been expected. American business is large. 
In Manchuria, America has acquired most of the cotton 
drill trade, and American locomotives are seen running 
on many of the new railways. But the great American 
campaign that was expected to sweep over the Far East 
five years ago has not come. Efforts were made to 
begin it, particularly by Mr. J. J. Hill, who sent his 
agents to Northern China and Japan to gather all 
kinds of information useful to American exporters. 
The American consular system in China has, on the 
whole, been admirable, and the details given in the 
American consular reports should have done much to 
stimulate American trade there. But, possibly because 
of their own great home markets, Americans, up to 
now, seem largely to have played with the Chinese 
demand. Some leading concerns have sent out good 
men, and have done good business ; but the main 
impression American business methods in the Far East 
convey is one of inadequacy. 

Other white nations, apart from Germany and 



CHINA AND FOREIGN TRADE 277 

America, need not be considered. The efforts that 
have been made in recent years to create scares 
over Russian trading competition are ludicrous to any 
man who has studied Russian business methods. The 
Russian is not a born trader. His field is the land 
rather than the factory. His virtues and his failings 
alike handicap him in a commercial war. French 
trade is very small. 

The most serious rival of all will be Japan. During 
the past year almost every month has been marked by 
the opening up of fresh Japanese shipping lines to 
China. The Japanese boats on the Yangtsze rival the 
British in number and importance ; Japanese travellers 
are everywhere, far beyond the treaty ports, and the 
Japanese are showing that they do not intend to be 
tied down by the treaty limitations which to-day 
restrain white men. Last August I was in a town far 
away in the interior of China, where no foreign mer- 
chant was allowed to settle or trade. I found a 
Japanese store there, with all kinds of Japanese 
merchandises displayed. " How is this ? " I asked. 
" Why is the Japanese here when no one else can 

" The Japanese are not allowed actually to sell their 
goods," I was told. " This store is simply a permanent 
exhibition of Japanese manufactures. If you want 
articles like those shown, the attendant will take your 
orders, send to Tokyo, and have them delivered to you." 
It requires a finely trained Oriental mind to see the 
distinction. 

Within the next few years the world will see the rise 
of a new factory system in China. Already factories 
are springing up on a large scale in many parts of the 



278 THE UNVEILED EAST 

Yangtsze valley. Chinese who have studied abroad 
return, keen to apply Western industrial methods. 
They have at hand a population, pliant, abundant, 
cheap, and industrious beyond question. The city of 
Fungchow is a striking example of what one individual 
Chinaman can do in bringing in Western industrial 
ways. Mr. Chang Chien set out to demonstrate there 
that China could manufacture for herself the fabrics 
now imported from abroad. He has already established 
in one suburb a cotton mill, equipped with English 
machinery, with forty thousand spindles for fine yarn, 
that is employing two thousand five hundred hands, and 
is capable of turning out thirty thousand bales a year. 
He has a mill for extracting oil from cotton seed, a 
flour mill with a capacity for seven million five hundred 
thousand pounds annually, a dyeing factory for cotton 
and silk fabrics, a factory for spinning and weaving silk, 
a canning factory for meat, fish, etc., and a plant for 
boiler making that is intended to grow eventually into 
a dockyard for building steam launches and their 
machinery. He has also a printing establishment and 
a soap factory. 

" On the Island of Tsumging on the Yangtsze 
under the same management," says the Commissioner 
of Customs at Chinkiang, " there is a cotton mill, 
and a large brick factory. In addition to these eleven 
establishments, nineteen more are projected or in 
course of erection ; all factories well built, worked by 
steam power, and lighted by electricity. Chinkiang 
flour mill produces a brown flour, pronounced by a 
foreign analyst pure and nutritious, and which, as I have 
found, makes excellent bread. The produce of the 
Fungchow mill is of like quality. Old-fashioned mill 



CHINA AND FOREIGN TRADE 279 

stones turned by steam power are now used, but steel 
rollers are to be introduced. I am informed by a 
Chinese gentleman that their textile fabrics are not equal 
to those of European, American, or Japanese mills, but 
cheap, and find ready market among the Chinese. 
Experience and skill will improve them. 

" The waterways, which spread net-like over the 
country, are mostly navigable by small launches, of 
which Mr. Chang has half a dozen. He has built a 
fine quay of some 1,500 ft. at Tang-chia-cha, also 
constructed a bridge there 200 ft. long, over the 
Liho ; is making lock-gates on the creek between 
Tang-chia-cha and the Yangtsze, otherwise impassable, 
and he has acquired a dredger wherewith to deepen 
the numerous shallows in the canals. He will shortly 
have two steamers running on the Yangtsze between 
Fungchow and Nanking.' ' 

The more progressive viceroys are taking an active 
part in promoting new industrial enterprises. Chang- 
Chih-Tung has for some years had great arsenals and 
factories at work ; the Viceroy Yuan is equally 
promoting industrialism, and to-day there are several 
Chinese Commissioners in Europe carefully examining 
industrial methods here and engaging picked assistants 
to go to their land. The Chinese Government under- 
stands, in part, that if it wishes to keep national 
industry in its own hands, or in the hands of its people, 
it must help it forward. 

There can be no more striking difference than 
between the Chinese and the Japanese as merchants. 
In Japan the brains and the best blood of the nation 
have for generations gone into the Government service ; 
in China the keenest intellects have gone into trade. 



280 THE UNVEILED EAST 

The Japanese trader was for long the scorn of the 
East, because of his trickery and untrustworthiness ; 
the praise of the Chinese merchant is in every man's 
mouth. 

A large silk-buying firm in Japan not long since 
assured me that it finds it necessary to examine and 
measure almost every yard of the material bought for 
exportation to America, in order to prevent itself 
from being robbed. A second silk firm, working 
from London, told me that it is in the habit of sending 
out its own expensive designs to Japan to be em- 
broidered. The greatest precautions are taken by it 
to prevent these designs becoming public, and yet 
it has found, time after time, that within a week or 
two of the arrival of its first consignments from Japan 
similar consignments are on sale in Hamburg. Con- 
trast this with the Chinese. In the tea trade it is 
the custom for the buyers at Hankow to purchase 
their tea in bulk, possibly hundreds of thousands of 
pounds in weight, and to purchase at the same time 
tea boxes from the sellers and to permit them to pack 
the tea and despatch it to England. The buyer 
troubles no more after he has finished selecting. 
Firms in Mincing Lane tell me that they would be 
quite content to distribute the cases which arrive in 
this fashion without opening or examining them in 
any way, although if they were bad the loss would 
fall on them. They are confident from old experience 
that the Chinese goods will be up to sample. The 
Chinese merchant keeps his word, whatever the loss, 
and once he has entered into a bargain he will fulfil 
it even though he is bankrupted in doing so. The 
Japanese is notorious for endeavouring to get behind 



CHINA AND FOREIGN TRADE 281 

any contract that subsequent events have made likely 
to be unprofitable. 

The head of one of the largest business houses in 
China and Japan once explained to me the difference 
between the Chinese and Japanese in commerce as he 
had found it. cc My firm," he said, " has been at work 
in Japan for over twenty years. We have done very 
well and our turnover is considerable. But we feel 
to-day that we have no more real grip here than we 
had at the beginning. The Japanese buy off us 
because it is to their immediate advantage to do so, 
but our oldest customers would turn from us in a 
moment for any fancied advantage from a newcomer, 
however small. In China we have our regular 
established connection and we are able to work in 
with the local merchants. A Chinese merchant will 
come to us at times and will tell us of some business 
that is going. ' This is not in my line/ he will 
say, * but I thought the information might be of use 
to you.' He will do this simply as a matter of 
friendly regard, and we, if opportunity arises, will 
reciprocate. Now if I were to go to one of my 
oldest Japanese clients and were to tell him of a good 
business opportunity that would yield him considerable 
profit, while yielding me nothing, I would expect to 
lose that man's trade in consequence. He would at 
once suspect me of ulterior motives ; he would go 
with suspicious eye over all our recent transactions, 
and he would believe that it was impossible for me 
to go out of my way to help him where there was 
no profit for myself." As I have pointed out in an 
earlier chapter, I believe that in the years to come 
the standard of Japanese commercial honesty will be 



282 THE ^UNVEILED EAST 

considerably raised. But, for the present, the Chinese 
in this respect are on quite another and higher plane. 

In describing the possibilities of the Chinese market, 
one has to tell not what is, but what will be. It is 
less than seven years since the Boxer movement spread 
like madness over the north of China, and the people 
wanted to cast out Western men and Western ways. 
The China of 1900 was reactionary, anti-foreign, 
insolent, and impracticable. The China of to-day is 
in the midst of the most stupendous transition the 
world has ever seen, a transition compared with which 
the modernisation of Japan was almost trivial. The 
China of to-morrow, clamorous with new needs, ringing 
with new industries, guided by men of great brain 
power and foresight, will be the world's market-place. 

Less than thirty years ago the first railway in China 
was torn up and partly thrown into the sea, in order 
to check all new ways of locomotion. To-day China 
is one of the most active railway builders. Electric 
tramways are beginning to run in some cities ; and 
a high, mandarin not long since described to me how 
he had bought a motor-car for the use of the imperial 
family. One sees on all sides evidences of the coming 
of the new industrialism. 

There are certainly some disturbing factors in the 
situation — factors bringing an element of risk. The 
first of these is the " China for the Chinese " move- 
ment which has recently played so important a part in 
business affairs. The second disturbing factor is the 
possibility of serious political ferment on the death 
of the Dowager Empress. The third is the certain 
reaction that will recur in limited districts against 
the foreigner. The introduction of modern ways will 



CHINA AND FOREIGN TRADE 283 

not be accomplished wholly without trouble. The 
coming of the electric tramway excites the wrath of 
the rickshaw coolies ; the railways disturb the great 
cart traffic ; the general introduction of steamers in 
the canals will deprive myriad river families of their 
bread. I take a typical protest from some Chinese 
business people against the introduction of electric 
traction, a protest made within the past few months. 
" Now, to introduce electric trams into the greatly 
crowded streets of the foreign settlements," they say, 
c< overwhelmingly increases the dangers to pedestrians. 
Can any one fail to picture to himself the numbers of 
those who will be injured by these electric trams ? 
Rustics from the surrounding villages and towns, 
traders and visitors from the interior, fill the streets in 
the course of their journeyings. If these people fail 
for one moment to be on the look-out or to avoid 
these trams, they will be naturally hurt. This will 
cause very serious trouble. In view of this we, the 
merchants and artisans of various trades and handi- 
crafts, are much disturbed at the imminent danger 
overhanging us." 

The European firm that resolves to attack the 
Chinese market would be well advised to secure the 
co-operation of a high-class Chinese house. A good 
Chinese merchant will make the interest of his foreign 
client his own, and he will work for him and with 
him. I am not here advising that any foreign house 
should place itself blindly in the hands of a Chinese 
agent, or that it should trust everything to a Chinese 
partner. But it is certain that more and more in the 
future the growing Chinese nationalism will make the 
co-operation of Chinese business associates essential for 



284 THE UNVEILED EAST 

those desirous of securing considerable trade. Besides 
having a reliable Chinese associate, the foreign firm 
should send a trusted and responsible man to the Far 
East, and give him considerable freedom of action. Such 
a man needs to be capable of using social influence, and 
yet above the power of temptation that is freely felt in 
the great white settlements. No trader can do his best 
in the Far East unless he is of rather stifFer moral fibre 
than the average man at home. I have known too 
much and heard too much of the good man in England 
wrecking himself within three years of his arrival in 
China to think this warning unnecessary. For the 
firm prepared to cater for it, there will be in China 
to-morrow the greatest potential market, in certain 
lines, that the world has ever known. This market 
will be largely appropriated within our time. Nothing 
but our apathy can prevent British merchants holding 
in the future, as in the past, first place there. 



CHAPTER XXI 

THE GREAT MISSIONARY QUESTION 



285 



CHAPTER XXI 

THE GREAT MISSIONARY QUESTION 

I 

pHE awakening of China, which now seems to 

1 be near, may be traced in no small measure 

to the hand of the missionary," said Tuan-fang, Viceroy 

of Hunan. " For this service you will find China 

not ungrateful." 

Less than seventy years ago the Protestant mis- 
sionaries in China had only six converts. To-day 
they have about one hundred and fifty thousand 
communicants, which means not far short of seven 
hundred thousand adherents. In Japan, effective mis- 
sionary work has been going on for a little over 
twenty years, and to-day there are fifty-five thousand 
converts. In Korea, Christianity is spreading at an 
amazing rate, especially in the northern provinces. 
But the influence of Christianity in these lands is 
not to be measured by the enrolled adherents. The 
white teachers have been pioneers in battering down 
prejudice and misunderstanding. They have shown 
to the East what the West is and what Western 
civilisation means. They brought modern medical 
knowledge to China, and China is now adopting it ; 
they brought modern instruction, and to-day temple 
after temple is having its idols displaced and deposed 
287 



288 THE UNVEILED EAST 

and the teacher of Western learning put in their place ; 
they started and maintained the campaign which is 
abolishing foot-binding, and they are largely respon- 
sible for the fight against opium. They are steadily 
winning the goodwill and respect of the official classes. 
They have been not only teachers of religion, but the 
advance agents of civilisation. 

II 

The visitor to the Far East who spends his time 
mainly around treaty ports will quickly acquire an 
abundant stock of anti-missionary stories. Some of 
these tales, such as the hoary lie about Bibles being 
used for the manufacture of Chinese shoes, were known 
to our great-grandfathers, and are chuckled over by 
every newly arrived u griffin," as though he were the 
original raconteur who had discovered them. 

It is easy to learn the cause and origin of some of 
these treaty-port anecdotes. There is, in the Far East, 
unfortunately, a gulf between the average missionary 
and the average commercial man. For this both are 
somewhat to blame. The oddity and faddism of a few 
missionaries have given the general community some 
ground for attack. A generation ago there was reason 
for suspecting that many so-called converts adopted 
Christianity mainly for what they could get. The 
policy of making <c rice Christians " — to use an ex- 
pressive phrase which explains itself — was then upheld 
by leading missionaries. It has long since been 
definitely abandoned. 

The gulf between the general residents and the 
missionaries is now being narrowed and bridged over. 



THE GREAT MISSIONARY QUESTION 289 

Leading European officials, merchants, and publicists 
have been won by the good work they have seen 
accomplished. There has been a great improvement 
in the personnel of the missionaries themselves. In 
old times men were often sent out because they were 
not clever enough to succeed at home. In some 
societies piety was allowed to take the place of ability. 
In recent years the wave of enthusiasm aroused by 
Moody, the evangelist, and Henry Drummond, the 
scientist, and men like Mr. Mott has altered that, and 
has given the work the pick of the brains of Scottish, 
American, and, to a lesser degree, English colleges. 
The genuineness of the movement was tested by fire 
and blood during the Boxer uprising, and it stood 
the test. 

There are to-day over three thousand Protestant 
missionaries at work in China, nearly all of them 
English or American. Most of these are young 
people in the prime of life. They have knowingly 
placed themselves in positions where any burst of 
national passion inevitably means their death in cruel 
and horrible form. Many of their colleagues have 
been killed during the past seven years, some of them 
dying under torments so heartless and punishments 
so degrading that we dare not think of them. Every 
missionary in the interior of China to-day lives, know- 
ingly, on the edge of the crater of a rumbling volcano. 
We may, if we will, deny these men and women 
wisdom ; at least we cannot deny them courage. 

Some time ago I hurried to a district in the north 
where an immediate uprising was expected. A warship 
had been sent to the coast to take the missionaries away, 
and I reached the interior town where they had come 

19 



290 THE UNVEILED EAST 

together to settle what they would do. First a letter 
was read from the American minister, leaving the 
decision in the hands of the people on the spot, but 
strongly urging that even if the men remained the 
ladies should be sent to the coast and to safety. 

Then one little lady arose. " If trouble comes," 
she said, " my women will be in great difficulties. I 
mean to stay by them." Then arose a second. " I 
remain with my husband," she said ; and she shot a 
smile, half laughter and half tears, at the man opposite. 
One after another said the same. As I listened to 
the serene and cheerful declarations of the speakers, 
my heart went out to them. They well knew what 
their fate might be, for some of them had cared 
for the tortured whites who escaped from the Boxer 
uprising. Yet they stayed at their posts. 

Ill 

My mind inevitably goes back to some of the main 
missionary incidents that it has been my good fortune 
to witness. One day last autumn I stood outside the 
compound of Mr. Turley, the agent of the British 
and Foreign Bible Society in Moukden, and looked 
at a pleasant-faced, elderly Chinese Bible-woman talking 
with and selling books to a crowd of natives around 
her. The woman's story was an exciting one. 

Six years ago, when the anti-foreign movement 
arose in Northern China, the Boxers at Moukden 
determined to make an end of Christianity there. 
They stormed the Roman Catholic Cathedral, and 
butchered the priests and nuns and their converts 
in horrible fashion. They broke up the Protestant 



THE GREAT MISSIONARY QUESTION 291 

missions, with ghastly accompaniments of torture and 
shame. They specially resolved to lay hold of this 
Bible-woman, for she had been so active and successful 
that all knew of her. At last they caught her, with 
two nieces, in a suburb of the city. 

The three women were thrown on a springless 
Chinese cart, and, surrounded by a howling mob, 
were led towards the centre of Moukden, where they 
were to be tortured, outraged, and killed. The two 
nieces were crying bitterly, and the old woman turned 
to them and spoke very earnestly. "Why should 
they cry ? " she asked. " Let them pray ! God would 
help them ! " She herself started praying, and soon 
her nieces joined her, and their tears ceased. 

It was a long and weary ride. The roadway was 
blocked with carts, and the death tumbrel could only 
move along at a snail's pace. The fears of the 
younger women were now over. There was not a 
tremble or a tear from them. Soon an uneasy sense 
of awe came over the Boxers. Why were not these 
women afraid ? One man suggested that some spirit 
was guarding them, and another spoke fearfully of 
the dangers that would fall on those who should 
offend the spirits, while others continued to shout 
loudly for vengeance. Still the cart moved on, nearer 
to the execution ground. 

As it passed under the shadow of the city walls a 
Chinese gentleman, well known in the locality, rode 
by in state. He cast his eye over the women. 
" What fools you Boxers are," he said, " to kill these 
women, when they might be sold for good silver ! I 
will buy them off you." The Boxers, already uneasy, 
saw a way out of their difficulty, and seized the 



292 THE UNVEILED EAST 

opportunity. The women, bound as they were, were 
tossed into the back of the gentleman's cart and driven 
out towards the country. 

When the cart had travelled away from the crowds 
into a quiet part the owner stopped it. The women's 
bonds were cut, and they were taken out. The 
Chinaman looked at them with a smile. " Some 
day," he said, " when you are well off again, you 
can pay me back what I have given for you to-day. 
Now you can go where you please." Is it any 
wonder that that old Bible-woman believes in Chris- 
tianity and in prayer ? When treaty-port critics 
talk to me of Ci rice Christians," I remember the 
Bible-woman of Moukden. 

IV 

In Northern Korea we have to-day one of the most 
remarkable examples of what modern missions are 
succeeding in doing. Thirty years ago Korea was 
a closed land, in which a stranger dared not set foot 
under pain of death. Northern Korea was the great 
bandit region, where no man's life was worth an 
hour's purchase. It was a district given up to plunder, 
because neither the Chinese Government to the north 
nor the Korean Government to the south was able 
to control it. Even to-day one can see on the hill- 
tops the ruins of the old castles of refuge, where 
the frightened inhabitants would rush in to defend 
themselves when the bandit host poured down. That 
region is now covered with self-supporting Christian 
churches. 

Fourteen or fifteen years ago two young Americans 



THE GREAT MISSIONARY QUESTION 293 

— Samuel Moffett and Graham Lee — settled in Ping- 
yang. They were regarded with suspicion at first, and 
they met with some very rough treatment. Gradually 
the people realised that these two young men meant 
well by them, and in the great political troubles that 
came upon Korea at that time the missionaries found 
their opportunity. The two Americans were clever, 
clear-thinking men, possessed of unconquerable energy. 
They worked at pressure unsurpassed on the Stock 
Exchange or in the city counting-house. They were 
amidst a people practically without religion, except a 
fear of evil spirits haunting their lives. 

Last July I visited their station. I found that 
they had their central church with an ordinary Sunday 
afternoon congregation of between thirteen and fifteen 
hundred. I found daughter church after daughter 
church in the town, each packed with its own con- 
gregation. I went into Sunday schools, thronged to 
repletion. The Korean young men asked me to speak 
on a week evening to them. A hall full of young 
fellows, in their long white robes — packed like sardines 
in a box — awaited me when I arrived. There was a 
hospital working at high pressure ; there were schools, 
ordinary and technical, started by the converts them- 
selves ; there were churches all over the province 
managed wholly by converts. I found an energy 
and enthusiasm equalling that of any one of the great 
institutional churches in white lands. I found, too, 
away in the province to the south, and away north- 
wards in Sun-chon, other centres had started up, 
offshoots from Ping-yang, rivalling it in success and 
numbers. In Sun-chon, for instance, there are no 
fewer than eighty churches in existence, after a separate 



294 



THE UNVEILED EAST 



work of five years. The statistics of Sun-chon are so 
remarkable that I quote them in full : 

Table of Comparative Growth since the Opening 
of Sun-chon Station in September, 1901. 



Date of 
Report. 


Groups. 


Communi- 
cants. 


Baptized 

during 

the year. 


Catechu- 
mens, 


Catechu- 
mens re- 
ceived 
during the 
year. 


Total 
Adherents. 


July, 1902 
July, 1903 
July, 1904 
July, 1905 
July, 1906 


44 
61 

57 
60 

78 


677 
1,027 
1,265 
1,958 
3,121 


267 
367 
3IO 
711 
1,164 


1,340 
1,648 
1,792 
1,952 

3,020 


696 
746 

53 £ 
948 

2,297 


3,429 
4,537 
5,"9 
6,507 
n,943 



DEFINITIONS 

Adherents. — Are adult believers in regular attendance 
at church services and leading consistent Christian 
lives. No infants or casual attendants or relatives of 
believers counted. 

Catechumen. — Has been believing at least six months, 
and has passed a satisfactory examination on Christian 
knowledge and conduct. 

Communicants. — Have been Catechumens for one year, 
during which time they have led consistent lives with 
no relapses into heathenism, after which they have 
passed a searching examination before baptism. 

How has this success been attained in Northern 
Korea ? It is certainly not due to political patronage 
nor to monetary gifts. The Korean Church has 
been built up in a time of great political turmoil. 
The missionaries have found the work grow so on 
their hands that, though their numbers have increased 
much beyond the first two, the white teachers can 
be little more than directors and leaders of the native 
work. It is the native Christians who evangelise, 



THE GREAT MISSIONARY QUESTION 295 

teach, and, in the main, who preach. Everything that 
can be done by the Koreans themselves is left to 
them. They are expected to pay the cost of their 
own houses of worship, to build their own churches, 
and to pay their own native ministers and evangelists, 
and they do it. 

I have tested the converts of this Church. I had 
several of them in my employment for months during 
the Japanese War. I had to trust them largely, and 
they could have fleeced me at many points. I found 
them the most faithful and most enthusiastic and 
the most daring native servants I have ever known. 
When I revisited their northern homes last summer 
they came out to meet me again — not old servants 
alone, but old friends whom one had learnt to admire 
and love. 



There are missionaries and missionaries. Catholic 
and Protestant missions have been carried out on 
radically different lines. The Protestant missionary 
relies on preaching, teaching, medical, and philanthropic 
work. The Catholic, on the other hand, while not 
neglecting these lines, largely employs political methods. 
The Protestant missionary has no rank save that which 
courtesy gives him, and he has declined to accept any. 
The Catholic missionary is an official and has to be 
recognised as such, and the Catholic bishop has to 
be given the privileges of a high Chinese dignitary. 
The Protestant missionary tries to avoid mixing him- 
self up with the legal and political disputes of his 
converts ; the Catholic missionary openly protects 
his people, and uses all his influence in the courts 



296 THE UNVEILED EAST 

in their favour, himself, if necessary and possible, 
encroaching upon magisterial functions. 

I should be sorry to write anything that might 
be taken as a depreciation of the zeal and disinterested- 
ness of the Catholic missionaries in China and Korea. 
They are, as a body, self-sacrificing, resolute, and 
devoted men and women. But the personal merit 
of the agents does not alter the fact that the methods 
they employ are accompanied by grave disadvantages. 
Their assumption of official rank has aroused intense 
prejudice against them. Their interference in the 
courts of law has often brought about real injustice. 
It has encouraged undesirable characters to join them 
in order that foreign influence might aid their claims 
before the mandarins. Most missionaries know what 
care has to be taken to prevent a litigant from using 
the name of the foreign teacher to advance his cause. 
The interference by the Catholic priests in Chinese 
courts has been responsible for hatreds, misunder- 
standings and extortion. It has caused more than one 
popular uprising, and it has prejudiced millions against 
Christianity. 

The outstanding criticism that an impartial observer 
would pass upon the Protestant missionaries in China 
is that in many parts to-day energy is being wasted 
and needless expense incurred by the multiplicity of 
agencies. There are about ninety separate missionary 
organisations at work in China alone. Some of these 
are devoted to special branches of work, such as Bible 
Societies, the Hildesheim Mission for the Blind, and 
the Kerr Refuge for the Insane. But, allowing for 
these, we find in various districts the repetition of 
minor sectarian divisions at the cost of efficiency and 



THE GREAT MISSIONARY QUESTION 297 

economy. It is absurd, for instance, that there should 
be half a dozen comparatively weak missionary schools 
in a district where one strong establishment could do 
all that is necessary. The missionaries themselves 
recognise this. Some years ago a serious endeavour 
was made to bring about organisations that would 
prevent such overlapping, and join up allied activities. 
The difficulty in bringing this to pass was found, 
I understand, not among the workers in China, but 
among the societies and subscribers in Europe and 
America. 

VI 

One charge sometimes heard against the missionary 
is that he lives in unnecessary luxury. According 
to some treaty-port critics, he is lapped in comforts 
that he could never hope to enjoy at home, and 
his days are relieved by many holidays and long 
furloughs. I have stayed in many missionary homes 
in my travels in the interior, and I have, times without 
number, received the greatest personal kindness from 
missionaries of all faiths. I found the average 
missionary home simple, plainly and inexpensively 
furnished. The greatest luxuries in most of them 
were the books and the husband's typewriter. In the 
overwhelming majority of the houses I visited every- 
thing showed that the housewife was attempting to 
make a brave show on a very moderate expenditure. 
So much has been said by partly informed critics on 
the other side that it is as well that one who has seen 
should tell what he knows. 

One real danger in the missionary movement in 
the Far East is not that the teachers should be too 



298 THE UNVEILED EAST 

ostentatious and extravagant, but that they should 
go too much to the other extreme. Young people in 
the first rush of overwhelming enthusiasm attempt 
to live impossibly Spartan lives. Older missionaries, 
anxious not to give the outside world room for criticism, 
deny themselves comforts that are essential to health. 
There has been a craze, I understand, for <c cheap " 
missionaries. Globe-trotters, passing hastily through a 
few stations, have reckoned up roughly how much the 
bare necessaries of life cost, and how much a missionary 
can live for. One blufF and popular member of 
Parliament visited a missionary station for a week 
some years ago. The missionary spent two months* 
salary on entertaining him, and had to go on short 
commons for the remainder of the year in consequence. 
The visitor returned home and publicly denounced his 
host and others for their extravagant living ! 

The " cheap " missionary is the dearest article the 
Churches can have. I have nothing but respect for 
the men and women who have attempted to live on 
purely native lines, whether as Salvation Army beggars 
in Southern India or as China Inland missionaries in 
the heart of Cathay. Such experiments, however, 
have been attended by a fearful cost of life and health, 
and, to some extent, of influence. The Salvation Army 
modified its first Indian methods, and the pioneers who 
so bravely tried to live in purely Chinese fashion are 
learning, too, that the requirements of white men and 
yellow men are not the same. 

One really good missionary of high mental calibre, 
thoroughly trained, and living an adequate life, is worth 
a score of half-trained and ill-equipped men. We 
have to face the fact that the work of the modern 



THE GREAT MISSIONARY QUESTION 299 

missionary is the most difficult that the Church calls 
on any of its agents to do. It is work demanding a 
combination of zeal, self-devotion, knowledge, and 
initial ability. If the missionary in a land like China 
or Japan is to be a success, he must be a leader of men. 
He must possess certain external qualifications which 
will give him the right to talk and be heard by those 
among whom he goes. The modern Chinese mandarin 
or the Japanese official is often enough in full touch 
with English ways. He knows our schools — very 
possibly one of his own sons is at Harrow ; he knows 
our Universities, for it is almost certain that some 
friend of his will have been through Cambridge or 
Yale ; and he has very likely read our great authors 
in translation, if not in their originals. Now, what 
is the use of sending out to an official like this a pious 
young man who was educated in a board school or a 
cheap private establishment, who passed through no 
University, and who had no opportunities of making 
up for these deficiencies by later training ? We 
must meet the clever Oriental on his own ground, 
with men as well trained as he is, and such training is 
not to be secured by a short course in a theological 
college. 

All the missionaries known to me who have made 
a success of their work, have been fully trained men, 
who started out with good natural abilities, and who 
added to them a thorough education. Some years 
ago the late D. L. Moody expressed a wish that every 
theological candidate should have a year as a book 
agent before he was ordained. It would be well if 
every missionary candidate could have, not a year as 
a book agent, but a course at a great University before 



300 THE UNVEILED EAST 

starting work. There he would secure the knowledge 
of the world and the power of dealing with men which 
the most carefully managed exclusively missionary 
institution cannot give. 

No one pretends that a University training is 
essential for missionary success. Some of the best 
workers have lacked it. But the University training 
helps, and those who did not have it had to acquire 
their mental discipline in other ways. 

The white missionary who is to do his work to the 
best advantage must have a reasonable degree of com- 
fort in his home. He is often in a situation that is 
exceedingly trying, isolated, and fighting hostile cir- 
cumstances. He has to spend months of each year, 
if he does his duty properly, living among the 
natives in native style. If he has no haven of rest, 
breakdown is almost inevitable ; and the trained mis- 
sionary is too expensive a product to be allowed to go 
under for a few pounds extra a year. To put the 
matter badly and brutally, it is not good business to 
permit a man whose education has cost a society pos- 
sibly a thousand or twelve hundred pounds, to become 
useless or almost useless at the outset of his career 
through semi-starvation. 

The charge of laziness sometimes brought against 
missionaries is, to those who know their work, ludicrously 
untrue. No doubt there are lazy men here and there, 
men who have lost their ideals, their energy, and their 
faith. The average Far Eastern missionary, however, 
as I know him, works exceedingly hard. Here, for 
instance, is a typical report from a young American 
friend of mine. He is describing to his Society what 
he has done in the year. He tells us first that he has 



THE GREAT MISSIONARY QUESTION 301 

been travelling away from home for one hundred and 
forty-five days during the past twelve months. " I 
have several times held as many as thirty-five services 
a month, preaching in person as many as twenty-six 
times. A not uncommon day's work was a trip of 
varying length in the morning, examinations and con- 
sultations all the afternoon, hurried sermon preparations 
during the evening meal, and an evening service in 
which might occur baptisms, reception of catechumens, 
the Lord's Supper, annual election of officers, and 
infant baptisms. Often a wedding ceremony would 
follow at the close of a two hours' service, and then 
conference with the newly elected officers until far into 
the night. Late hours, early starts, and the same 
programme day after day frequently left the Korean 
helpers completely exhausted after a few days." 

VII 

The most striking thing in the missionary position 
in China to-day is the way in which the confidence of 
the officials is being won. 

In Liaoyang I found on entering the city after the 
great battle between the Russians and the Japanese, 
that the chief Chinese magistrate had handed over the 
work of relieving distress to Dr. Westwater, the well- 
known missionary there. The magistrate and the 
leading merchants had given the buildings and were 
supplying money, and allowed Dr. Westwater a free 
hand in the management of affairs. This is as though 
the authorities, say, in Birmingham, were in an hour 
of crisis to ask a Japanese resident to take the entire 
charge of their Poor Law administration. " Why do 



3 o2 THE UNVEILED EAST 

not the Chinese officials do this for themselves ?" I 
asked. " The magistrate knows that if he gave the 
money to his own assistants, most of it would go in 
their pockets," came the reply. " He is sure that the 
doctor will spend all of it on the people." 

Viceroy Yuan bore a similar testimony on behalf 
of the Imperial Government to the work of the 
Manchuria missionaries. When thanking them for 
help given to homeless and destitute Chinese during 
the war, he wrote in an official message, " I sincerely 
hope that you will be enabled through the blessings 
of heaven to continue your work among the Chinese, 
to whom you have deeply endeared yourself by the 
demonstrations of your universal love." 

We find to-day in district after district that the 
high Chinese officials themselves are subscribing liber- 
ally to missionary schools and hospitals, that they are 
attending special missionary anniversaries and opening 
ceremonies, and are giving sympathetic, kindly, and 
friendly aid. The pupils of the medical missionaries 
are to-day the native leaders of the reformed medical 
profession all over China. Missionary schools are 
being imitated by the officials in many cities. The 
missionaries are leading the way in sanitation, in the 
creation of modern literature, in the promulgation of 
Western scientific ideas, and by arousing communities 
to new commercial needs. Their hospitals have 
broken down the prejudices of hundreds of thousands, 
and the martyrdom of their pioneers has been the 
voluntary offering of the West for the regeneration 
of China. 

In the missionary movement in the Far East to-day 
we have, despite mistakes, misunderstandings, and a 



THE GREAT MISSIONARY QUESTION 303 

proportion of unsuitable men, one of the most splendid 
exhibitions of Anglo-Saxon altruism the world has 
ever seen. 

VIII 

What are the dangers of modern missions ? I have 
already written as emphatically as I could about the 
perilous idea of working them on the cheap or with 
inferior men. The missionary who has not received 
a thorough intellectual training is ever liable to narrow- 
ness and crankiness. With strong men there is a 
temptation, in their zeal for results, to use political 
means. These means look so easy, and they make a 
splendid show ; but they are always in the end a curse 
to those who employ them. 

Another danger to missions is the continuance of 
the second-class man among the workers on the field. 
The second-class man gives the critic his handle, and 
is a burden on the capable. We should get rid of the 
idea that, because a person has been adopted by a 
society, he must be kept by it for ever, however un- 
suitable he proves. Modern missions should be run 
on strictly business lines. Piety should never be an 
excuse for incapacity, and the man whose good inten- 
tions and zeal are his sole recommendations should be 
kept at home. 

The missionary societies in the future will, I believe, 
use the press both at home and abroad far more 
extensively than they do to-day. They will show 
the country that foreign missions are not alone the 
cause of religion, but are also the cause of civilisation, 
and that the trained, efficient, and skilled agent of the 
Churches in the interior of China is the outpost 



3 o 4 THE UNVEILED EAST 

defender of those ideals on which the stability of our 
civilised life to-day depends. 

A generation ago the Far East was separated from 
the West by a great gulf, and the Churches at home 
had to depend for their information on the reports 
of the few who visited them. To-day East and West 
are so close together that there is no reason why 
religious leaders in England should not at intervals 
see for themselves what their comrades at the front 
are doing. In the coming years it will, I hope, be 
taken as a matter of course that the leaders of the 
Churches at home shall all give part of their time 
to visiting, encouraging, and aiding the agents of the 
Church abroad. London is only nineteen or twenty 
days' distance from Peking. Our great church leaders 
could visit the missionary centres in Northern China 
and be back home again within ten weeks from their 
starting from London, at a cost of less than two 
hundred pounds. I cannot imagine two hundred 
pounds better spent, both for the cheer and encourage- 
ment of the missionaries abroad and the instruction 
of the people at home. 



CHAPTER XXII 

JAPAN AND CHRISTIANITY 



305 20 



CHAPTER XXII 

JAPAN AND CHRISTIANITY 

THE missionary question in Japan has reached a 
stage of interest to all concerned in the relations 
of Eastern and Western nations. A generation ago 
the missionary was barred, and the profession of 
Christian faith rendered a man liable to death. " When 
I first stepped upon Japanese soil," said Dr. W. Eliot 
Griffis, " I saw the name of Yesu (Jesus) outlawed 
in the Government edicts, and found that it was 
popularly synonymous with demons and sorcery. 
There was no Christian Church, and but a half-dozen 
hidden Bible Christians. Some Roman Catholics in 
the red clothes of the criminal, roped together, were 
being led to banishment in mountain-crater-prisons.' ' 

For many years there has been not merely nominal, 
but actual freedom of conscience in Japan. The young 
man who adopts Christianity rests under no social 
stigma, although his changed faith may produce some 
temporary family trouble. The 55,000 enrolled 
Protestant Christians included statesmen, officials, and 
army officers ; and Christianity has among its open 
adherents a number of really influential men dispro- 
portionate to its strength. Even leaders of opinion 
who are not Christians will often take part in great 
Christian ceremonies. Thus recently Count Okuma 
addressed the General Conference of the Church of 
3°7 



3 o8 THE UNVEILED EAST 

Christ in Japan. " It gives me great pleasure," he 
said, " to meet so many workers in the spiritual world 
as are here to-day. For one like myself, who has no 
religion, to talk to religious people like you is no 
easy task. I am very much ashamed of the fact 
that I have no religion, but it is the result of 
unavoidable circumstances. I am a product of the 
age in which I have lived. No one but a genius is 
able to overcome the consequences of his environ- 
ment. Though having nothing that can be called 
religion, I have notions in reference to a Power that 
is above us." 

Two great forces are now at work affecting the 
Christian movement in Japan. The first of these is a 
revival of Buddhism. The Buddhist faith in Japan 
was for long exceedingly degenerate, and the priests, 
often lazy and licentious, aroused considerable scandal 
by their lives. Apart from national claims, the 
Buddhists had little hold on the mass of the thinking 
men of the country. This, however, has been 
strikingly changed. Some of the Buddhist leaders, 
adopting the methods and the moral teaching of 
Christianity, have been quietly pushing Buddhism to 
the front as a national faith. They are sending their 
missionaries abroad to China, to Korea, to India, to 
Hawaii, and elsewhere. 

Once Buddhism is generally regarded by the 
Japanese people as the national faith, and Christianity 
as the foreign creed, the difficulties in the way of 
Christianity will be enormously increased. A counter 
movement is going on, one that is regarded by many 
missionaries as dangerous and immature, but which 
may in the end be the best advance ever made by 




SHINTO PRIESTS, OFFICIALLY ATTACHED TO THE 
JAPANESE ARMY. 



JAPAN AND CHRISTIANITY 309 

the Christian religion in the Far East. The Japanese 
converts are abolishing the sectarian differences of 
European and American Protestant Churches, and 
they are also politely, but none the less firmly, giving 
the missionaries notice to quit, and are declaring that 
they will carry out their church work in their own 
way and with their own people. 

The Japanese Christians were early struck by the 
folly of reproducing all the minute differences of 
Protestantism in their land. Their first attempts to 
limit the number of denominations were frowned upon 
by several of the missionary bodies, more particularly 
in America. The missionary societies desire that their 
men on the field should maintain the particular form 
of faith favoured by them. The real difficulty in the 
way of co-operation on the mission field is nearly 
always from the subscribers of the funds at home, and 
not from the workers at the front. Faced by the 
problems of non-Christian countries, the divisions 
which seem deep and impassable at home are found 
to be nothing more than shallow, narrow, and easily 
bridged rivulets. 

The Church of England and American Episcopal 
Church naturally joined forces. A Methodist Church, 
representing all the different Methodist bodies, has 
now practically completed its organisation ; the various 
Presbyterian bodies have come together as " The 
Church of Jesus Christ in Japan," and it seems probable 
that even the deeper lines of denominational demarca- 
tion will be broken down and one united Christian 
Japanese Church established. 

The movement for the exclusion of the foreign 
missionary involves other issues. The Japanese feel 



310 THE UNVEILED EAST 

that if they are strong enough to manage their own 
political affairs, they are also strong enough to manage 
their own religion. The whole nation deeply resents 
being classed as heathen or put on the same level as 
China and Korea, even though its national religious 
practices are the same. The Japanese Christians say 
that they will govern themselves, and they have issued 
their Declaration of Independence. Practically their 
claim is that they have now reached a higher intellec- 
tual level than that of the men sent out to instruct 
them, and that the latter are not required. 

The situation is a difficult one and requires tact and 
careful handling. There is much that is healthy in the 
desire of the Japanese to manage the Christian propa- 
ganda in their own land, and Christianity will never 
lay hold of the mass of the people so long as foreigners 
keep chief control. On the other hand, many of the 
missionaries are not unnaturally somewhat hurt at 
the eagerness of their converts to escape from their 
instruction. They feel too that the young Churches 
are not sufficiently advanced to go on by themselves, 
and they believe that the hasty assumption of 
native authority will retard the work and lead to 
many blunders. 

The less desirable side of the new movement is that 
it is associated in some minds with a decidedly anti- 
foreign tendency. This was shown in a letter that 
some young Korean Christians, who went to Tokyo 
to study, wrote to a friend of mine after they had been 
away for a few months. " We cannot understand," 
they said, " what some of the Christians in this 
land want us to do. Several of them have come to 
us and have told us that all brown people are of 



JAPAN AND CHRISTIANITY 311 

one race, and that all white people are of another. 
They urge us to write to our fellow church members 
in our city, advising them to have nothing to do 
with white missionaries, and to work with people 
of their race. What does this mean ? " I do not 
say that this idea is common among the Japanese 
Christians who are declaring their independence, but 
it is certainly there. 

The question of foreign missionary control was very 
fully and ably discussed from the Japanese point of 
view in the Fukuin Shimpo on October 25 last year. 
The writer admitted that Japanese Christianity owes 
an enormous debt of gratitude to the foreigner. 
"That in a world where profit is sought after and 
greed prevails to such a large extent, the missionary 
spirit should exist among Christians in foreign lands, 
to a degree implied by this enormous outlay of effort 
and money, is an interesting fact which goes far to 
show that there is much benevolence in the world." 
But when the article went on to discuss the attitude of 
Japanese Christians to the foreign missionaries a note 
of superiority was assumed. " We should see to it 
that their money is not wasted, and when their mis- 
sionary efforts are misdirected it is our place to faith- 
fully point out where they are wrong. We should do 
our best to keep those who have sent them to these 
shores from being disappointed by their fruits of 
labour. Far be it from us to abandon old missionaries 
as in ancient times old women for whom there was no 
longer any use were abandoned in the mountains (uba 
sute-yama no koji no gotoku su). We are in favour 
of rendering their declining years as happy as possible. 
If we had our way, we would ' send them back to their 



3 i2 THE UNVEILED EAST 

countries clothed in brocade.' Are all these nine hundred 
missionaries needed in Japan ? Considered in pro- 
portion to the population, their number would be too 
small were it multiplied by ten. But when we con- 
sider the actual use to which they can now be put, we 
are obliged to confess that they are in excess of re- 
quirements, and we fear that not a few of them dis- 
appoint those who sent them here. How many 
missionaries are there that efficiently carry on mission 
work among the Japanese ? Even those whom special 
attainments have qualified to carry on direct evange- 
listic work find that opportunities for doing this grow 
fewer every day. Just as Japan has little use for 
foreign medical men or for military officers to-day, 
so she has less and less use for foreign missionaries." 

The writer went on to declare that the number of 
foreign missionaries in whose talents, devotion, learning, 
and eloquence the Japanese pastors have sufficient 
confidence to make them desire them as fellow workers, 
is very few. He claimed that many Japanese who co- 
operated with them did so only because the missionaries 
had long purses, and he demanded the reduction of 
the number of missionaries by weeding out the useless 
ones and only leaving men of character and real 
efficiency. 1 

Whether we like it or not, the day of the foreign 
missionary of the old type in Japan is over. The 
missionary work there to-morrow will rather be done 
by the occasional visits of expert foreign evangelists 

1 For the translation of this article I am indebted to the monthly 
missionary summary in The Japan Weekly Mail, a summary that can 
be heartily commended to all who desire to keep in touch with 
religious development from the Japanese point of view. 



JAPAN AND CHRISTIANITY 313 

and by the literary and intellectual efforts of a few 
highly trained teachers, than along present lines. 

The independence movement is spreading from 
Japan to other parts of Asia, and in the future much 
more will be heard of it than in the past. Thus the 
Rev. W. Dale, of the Presbyterian Church of England 
Mission, writes to me, " The Russo-Japanese War 
has of course touched the feeling and ambition of 
South China, where our missions are situated, as much 
as other parts of that great Empire, and some of the 
younger men, preachers and church members, are in- 
clined to resent any interference at all on the part of 
the foreign mission staff and to claim absolute in- 
dependence. As soon as they can entirely support 
their own Christian work, their desire for increased 
self-control will not be withstood either from home or 
by the mission staff on the field. 

" At the Amoy centre things have gone a little 
further, and an attempt is now being made to gather 
together the converts from the three Protestant mis- 
sions at work there into an absolutely independent 
Christian Church. The missionaries look with some 
misgiving on this movement ; but they are not trying 
to resist it, and if it be wisely conducted and have some 
success, no doubt the movement will be spread. There 
is a great untouched field in many parts of China, and 
there are parts of our own district which have not yet 
been fully cultivated, so that, if in the districts where 
the Gospel has a real and considerable hold, inde- 
pendent, self-supporting Churches can be established, it 
will enable the missions to push on into yet compara- 
tively unoccupied fields." 

The son goes out in the world and the mother 



I 

314 THE UNVEILED EAST 

grieves, knowing that many dangers await him Yet 
only by facing danger can his manhood be tempered. 
So it is with the young Japanese Church. It goes out 
to freedom, possibly to times of mistake and of danger. 
But the very risks it may have to face will make it 
strong. 



CHAPTER XXIII 

ENGLAND'S OPPORTUNITY 



315 



CHAPTER XXIII 

ENGLAND'S OPPORTUNITY 

THE world change that has proceeded since the 
February night when the Japanese torpedo 
boats made their dash for the Russian fleet in Port 
Arthur harbour has been charged with greater results 
for humanity as a whole than any series of developments 
for many centuries. Events have followed one another 
so thickly — now silently and almost unobserved, now 
with startling and dramatic swiftness — that we are only 
beginning to realise something of their real significance. 
Russia has been forced to retire from Manchuria, 
and Japan has stepped into her admitted place as a 
premier world Power. Since the conclusion of peace 
the Japanese have shown that they can carry into 
commerce the same activity, the same far-sighted 
organisation, and the same power for detail work that 
they revealed in war. They have given the world some 
knowledge of their imperial ambitions and their world- 
wide designs. They have become active and aggressive 
colonisers. They have enormously increased their 
territory, in effect if not in name. They have, by 
their example, aroused their potentially greater neigh- 
bour, China, to new life. They have launched a 
movement, " Asia for the Asiatics," and their pioneers 
are teaching alike to Indian youth, Siamese princeling, 
and Chinese official that the day of world-domination 
317 



3 i 8 THE UNVEILED EAST 

by the white man is over. Are we willing to accept 
this racial retrogression ? If not, what is to be our 
policy in the Far East ? 

The vital issue here is our attitude towards China, 
even more than our attitude towards Japan. China 
to-day needs a friend among the Great Powers. That 
friend should be England. The statesmen who rule in 
Peking distrust both Russia and Japan, believing that 
these nations have designs against their territory ; and 
they hate Germany on account of her seizure of Kiao- 
chau and her conduct in the Shantung province. They 
recognise that America has been more disinterested 
than other Governments, but they have a grudge 
against her because of the indignities inflicted upon 
Chinese subjects in California and elsewhere. They 
know that they cannot yet stand alone, and some years 
ago they hoped that England would see that their land 
had justice among the nations. The weakness of 
our policy in the Far East during the past decade has 
greatly shaken their confidence in us ; but it is not yet 
too late for confidence to be restored, and for us to 
secure China's lasting goodwill, gratitude, and friend- 
ship. Only, to do that we must be prepared to take up 
a definite attitude, to stick to it, and, if necessary, to 
fight for it. 

In acting as the protector of China, we should not 
stand alone. Events during the past few months have 
convinced America that if she is to retain her position 
on the Pacific she must be moving. It needs no 
prophetic vision to see that within the next few years 
the American fleet around the Yellow Sea will be 
enormously increased. Japan never made a greater 
mistake than when her representative and part of her 



ENGLAND'S OPPORTUNITY 319 

press used threatening language towards the Federal 
Government at Washington, and the mistake was none 
the Jess because for the moment Japan was in a position 
to enforce her threat. English and American interests 
in the Far East are identical. 

The first step for us, if we desire to retain our 
predominance on the Pacific, should be to retract 
the blunder of 1905, when we decided to withdraw our 
big fighting ships from the China seas. If we are to be 
respected we must give evidence of our power. The 
Oriental believes in what he sees. It is useless for us 
to have a strong policy without the weight of a strong 
fleet behind it. We need a real fighting squadron in 
Eastern waters again. 

Then we must take active steps to guard both our 
own and China's rights and interests in Manchuria and 
our interests in Korea. In the latter country it would 
be well worth our while to insist upon the retention of 
a proportion of British officials in the Customs Service. 
Friendly representations to Japan would go a long way 
towards restoring actual as well as nominal control of 
Manchuria to China. We need at least four Consuls in 
Manchuria, besides our present Consul at Newchwang. 
These should be stationed at Dalny, Moukden, 
Kirin, and Harbin. It is not necessary to have a 
Consul at Antung, as that place is not as yet of sufficient 
importance. America is hurrying forward her Consuls. 
One settled in Dalny in September, and another, 
Mr. Willard Straight, took up his position as Consul- 
General at Moukden in October. If our new 
Consuls are the right type of men — as most of our 
China Consuls are — and if they have the Foreign 
Office actively behind them, they can do invaluable 



320 THE UNVEILED EAST 

service in safeguarding our commercial interests in 
Manchuria. 

I have never concealed my conviction that certain 
stages of the new movement in China will probably 
produce serious internal trouble, in which foreigners 
may suffer severely. One Power, at least, hopes to 
use such disturbances as pretext for intervention, with 
the ultimate object of acquiring Chinese territory. For 
us to permit this will be folly. From the point of 
view of selfish interest alone, the integrity and genuine 
independence of the Chinese Empire are worth our 
fighting for, if they can be maintained in no other 
way than by fighting. 

We might greatly help forward the educational 
movement in China. There are now about twelve 
thousand Chinese students in Japan, and the Japanese 
Government and educational institutions are doing 
everything possible to attract them. No money could 
be better invested than that spent in inducing some 
of the best of the Chinese students to come to England. 
The cost of the journey to England and of living 
here is so high meantime that none but a few can 
afford it. A little encouragement would add to these 
numbers. Far-sighted diplomacy might even consider 
it wise to maintain a well-equipped and very cheap 
university at Singapore for Chinese, with English 
professors. The foreign-trained students are the future 
rulers of China. It would be to our interest and 
to their advantage that they should be taught under 
Western influences. 

What are we going to do about the opium question ? 
Let me here say that I am not an anti-opium fanatic. 
I fully recognise that in certain parts of India the 



ENGLAND'S OPPORTUNITY 321 

effects of opium are no more harmful than the effects 
of alcohol at home. I believe that the anti-opium 
campaign has been injured by the intemperance and 
bitter language of some of its advocates. Still the 
fact remains that in China — unlike India — the smoking 
of opium is a fearful national curse. It destroys 
character, it saps energy, and it perverts morals. If 
the official smokes opium, the district under him goes 
to ruin ; if the servant smokes, dishonesty and laziness 
follow ; if the father smokes, the household is often 
wrecked. The Chinese authorities have set them- 
selves no harder task than to remove this curse. They 
will be hampered by the clamorous appetites of their 
own people, and they will be weakened by their desire 
for revenue. It is not enough here for us to express 
pious sympathy and to say that we are willing to 
co-operate if we are satisfied of China's sincerity. It 
is for us by our national policy to strengthen the 
hands of the anti-opium officials. 

When England took Wei-hai-wei she departed from 
her traditional policy. The occupation of this port 
is now an admitted blunder. It is of no use to us, 
and can be of no use. It is worthless as a naval 
base or as a military station. Why should we retain 
it ? No step could do more to convince China of 
the sincerity of our good intentions towards her, and 
no step could be more grateful to China's reviving 
national pride, than for us to give it back. The 
British who have gathered around that place would, 
of course, have to be adequately compensated, but 
that would present no serious difficulty. 

The task of helping China in her march towards 
modern civilisation should naturally fall to England 

21 



322 THE UNVEILED EAST 

and America. Alone among the world nations, we 
to-day desire no further territorial gains. It is to 
our interest to have a China aroused, provided we 
also have a China enlightened and a China free. New 
China is in the making. Let us do our part towards 
moulding her into a progressive Power, permeated 
with those ideals of personal freedom, respect towards 
women, and peace among men for which we have 
struggled and striven so hardly and so long. The 
arousing of the East should crown the triumph of 
the moral ideals of the West. 

Why, it may be asked, should we concern ourselves 
about this distant land ? Those who speak thus have 
faint idea of the duties of Empire, We are still the 
premier world nation ; we have still the greatest 
commercial stake in the Far East ; we still maintain 
fleets before which the oldest and the youngest of 
other great naval Powers must give way. We have 
the trade and the prestige, and we can enforce our 
will. If we only throw off the indecision and the 
inaction which have been our curse in China for a 
generation, the prestige and commerce of Britain 
around the Yellow Sea may have a greater and more 
glorious future than ever our fathers dreamed. We 
go to China to-day not as an intriguer, and not as 
a would-be conqueror, but as a friend. 



APPENDIX 
THE KOREAN CASE AGAINST JAPAN 



323 



APPENDIX 
THE KOREAN CASE AGAINST JAPAN 

I 
A Korean Foreign Office Statement 

rWO petitions were drawn up by the Korean 
Foreign Office early in the autumn of 1903 for 
presentation to President Roosevelt. The text of the 
second of these has fallen into my hands. I understand 
that this second petition was not actually despatched, 
as the Japanese acquired control of the Government 
immediately after it was signed. 

The petition begins by reminding the American 
Government that under the Treaty of 1883, between 
America and Korea, there was a clause providing 
that, " If other Powers deal unjustly or oppressively 
with either Government the other will exert their 
good offices, on being informed of the case, to bring 
about an amicable arrangement, thus showing their 
good feelings." 

The memorial then continues : " Our Govern- 
ment at the present time feels forced to inform your 
Government that we are being dealt with ' unjustly 
and oppressively ' by the Government and people of 
Japan and to appeal to the President of the United 
3 2 5 



326 APPENDIX 

States of America and your Government to, in 
accordance with the above quoted article of the treaty, 
use your good offices in bringing about an amicable and 
just settlement. 

" The actions of the Japanese Government and 
people that we complain of and to which we desire 
to call your attention are well known and can be more 
than substantiated, and may be called in part as 
follows : 

" First : — In Politics. They have chosen out four 
or five of the worst officials, those who have previously 
disturbed the Government, and without regard to life 
and property have extorted from the people and have 
put them in power and, having placed their own 
nationals as advisers in almost all the departments, 
they are controlling the Government and oppressing 
the Emperor and his officials. 

" Second : — In the Dispensing of Justice. They 
have by force interfered with the Korean officers of 
justice so that they could not carry on their regular 
work ; they have been seizing the police power 
both at the capital and in the provincial towns 
and trying both civil and criminal cases ; but if 
a Japanese subject has been doing injustice to a 
Korean, they not only do not stop him, but secretly 
encourage him to the detriment of Korean life and 
property. 

" Third : — In the Matter of Finances. At the 
time of the attempt to reform the money system of 
Korea, some thirty or more Koreans willingly offered 
a loan of three million yen to their Government to 
be used in this attempt at reform, but the Japanese 
Minister to Korea prevented the acceptance and 



APPENDIX 327 

forced the Korean Government to accept a loan of 
three million yen from the Japanese Government. 

" Still later, announcing that the currency of the 
country must again be changed, they presented a new 
coinage which was not any better than the old, and 
thus their profits were very great, and when they 
came to exchange the new for the old they always 
claimed a shortage of two or three per cent., and not 
only made the people thus suffer great loss, but thus 
made it so that they could not exchange their 
money ; the trickery of which scheme is shown in the 
fact that if the exchange is not made by the end 
of next year the old money will be demonetised 
and the whole country's financial resources will be 
exhausted. 

" Still further, by forcing the authorisation of the 
use of the notes of the Japanese Dai Ichi Bank, 
in place of money (although the bank has but a 
small reserve fund), they have illegally gained great 
profit. 

" They have also arranged it so that Japanese are 
to collect the taxes of the country, and deposit the 
same in the said Dai Ichi Bank, and thus they have 
placed the entire wealth of Korea in the hands of 
this one irresponsible private bank. 

" Fourth : — In Matters Military. At the open- 
ing of the Japan-Russia war, Japan forced Korea to 
make a treaty whereby Japan was allowed freely to 
transport her troops and munitions of war through 
Korea to the seat of the war ; and in return for this 
they are about to quarter tens of thousands of their 
troops in different parts of Korea, and have forced 
the Korean Government and people to surrender 



328 APPENDIX 

thousands of acres of land on which to quarter these 
troops in Seoul, Pyeng Yang, and other places, for 
which land the Government and people are receiving 
no recompense. In the name of the military authori- 
ities of Japan large tracts of land have also been staked 
out on which in some cases Japanese merchants are 
building houses, and when the real owners apply for 
help or recompense they get no redress. 

" The Japanese asserted that temporary military 
necessities forced them to seize and undertake rail- 
roads, and now although peace has been declared they 
still continue to hold and work them without receiving 
or seeking any concession from the Korean Govern- 
ment ; and for the property and houses of the people 
condemned for the road they did not give the worth, 
but are paying one per cent, of the value or give them 
nothing at all. Not only have they thus seized all 
the land needed for the immediate road-bed, but at 
all points where they have decided to have stations they 
have seized and enclosed large tracts of land on all 
sides of these stations without recompense to the 
owners. 

" In sections of land of great importance from a 
commercial point of view, large tracts of land and 
thousands of houses have been staked off with the 
Japanese military stakes, as needed for military pur- 
poses and not to be sold, thus preventing all land 
exchanges and sales in these sections and causing great 
loss and distress to the Koreans and possible great 
profit to the Japanese. 

" On the plea of £ Martial Law ' they have on several 
occasions arrested Koreans who unintentionally touched 
telegraph posts or walked along the railroad, even 



APPENDIX 329 

though they were aged people and children, and, 
alleging that they were planning to destroy the 
military railroad or telegraphs, they have had them 
shot. 

u They have dug up the graves along the railroad, 
and ruthlessly piling the bones in heaps, have burned 
them, and have thus aroused the ire and hatred of 
the Koreans. 

" When they had in the suburbs of Seoul forcibly 
set stakes preparatory to taking possession of land and 
houses, several thousands of the Korean citizens 
residing in this section, in accordance with Korean 
custom, presented themselves quietly and peaceably 
at the Home Department. The Minister of Home 
Affairs at this time was a member of the ultra Pro- 
Japanese Party, and, frightened, fled and escaped over 
the back wall. Japanese soldiers, with drawn swords, 
drove away the petitioners and many of the people 
were wounded. 

u His Majesty the Emperor of Korea, from deposits 
to his private account in the Mitsui Bussan Kaisha and 
Dai Ichi Bank in Seoul, ordered that three hundred 
thousand yen be given to ameliorate the sad condition 
of merchants and others at the time of the exchange 
of currency ; but the said Company and Bank, asserting 
that it was per order of the Army (Japanese) Head- 
quarters, said that without the permission of Mr. Megata, 
Adviser (Japanese) of the Treasury Department, they 
could not give it, and they have not yet done so. 
This certainly was high-handed and contrary to all 
law and equity. 

" Although during the past ten years there have 
been no disturbances in Korea, and the Korean Military 



33Q APPENDIX 

and Police have easily been able to maintain order 
throughout the whole empire, during the war, as a 
c Military Necessity/ Japan seized the control in these 
departments, and now, despite the fact that the war 
is at an end, continues to maintain her hold upon the 
same. 

" Fifth : — In Commercial Lines. When the 
Koreans were with credit carrying on the Telegraphic 
and Postal Departments of the Bureau of Communica- 
tions, the Japanese forced them to give over both 
departments and do not now run them as well as 
formerly. 

" They have forced concessions to be granted of 
all our fisheries and transportations by boat in internal 
waters. 

" They have without agreement or permission seized 
the department for the promotion of the silk industry. 
" They have by force torn down the east and south 
gates in the city wall at Pyeng Yang, and without 
compensation condemned and forcibly torn down the 
people's houses for the laying of an electric railway. 

" Scheming for commercial advantages, they have 
brought about forced sales of land and houses in the 
interior. 

" In direct contravention of the fifth article of the 
First Protocol, which was signed last year, between 
Korea and Japan, Japan made a treaty of alliance with 
England, the third article of which works to the 
detriment of and seriously endangers that independence 
of the said First Protocol with Japan, but which Japan 
has declared many times to the world that she will 
uphold even though it should entail war. 

" In regard to the third article of the Anglo- Japan 



APPENDIX 331 

Treaty of Alliance, the Korean Foreign Office sent a 
formal protest to the Legations of the two countries 
in Seoul asserting that our Government refused to 
acknowledge the validity of the same. The Korean 
Foreign Office directly asked the British Minister in 
Seoul to telegraph to his Government asking the can- 
celling of the third article. 

c< How could any one blame our country for this 
action in the defence of our independence, yet the 
Japanese, without reason, are constantly finding fault 
with this action. 

cc In addition to the above it is impossible to relate 
all the numerous ways in which the Japanese have 
been and are trying to take away the independence of 
Korea, and to cut her off from the friendship of 
Europe and America. 

u We have thus gone into a few of the details that 
show the ' unjust and oppressive way ' in which the 
Government and people of Japan have been treating 
our Government and people, not only because we 
believe that, as your Government has always* done, she 
will keep to her treaty, but also because we feel 
assured that in the interests of equity and justice she 
will use her good offices at the present time on our 
behalf. 

"At the time of the Japan-China War we were 
forced to apply to your Government ; and the prompt 
and decisive action of your Government, as voiced in 
Secretary Gresham's despatch, averted the trouble at 
that time. We regret exceedingly to again be re- 
questing similar services, but the c oppression and 
injustice ' under which we now suffer is much more 
severe than at that time," 



332 APPENDIX 

II 
The Open Letter of Choi Ik Hyon 

The following open letter was sent by Choi Ik 
Hyon, an old Korean courtier, on June 3, 1906, to the 
Resident-General and the Japanese Cabinet. Choi Ik 
Hyon was arrested and exiled for his temerity. 

" Listen ! Listen ! It is said that loyalty to one's 
native land and love for one's fellow countrymen are 
natural, and that to keep faith and deal uprightly is 
virtuous. I declare that the man who is not loyal 
should perish, and that the country without this virtue 
should be destroyed. This is not merely the idea of 
a stubborn old man. The history of the world 
demonstrates that all the great nations of to-day would 
not stand where they do had their people not been 
loyal and patriotic. 

" When Kuroda, your Ambassador, came to Korea 
thirty years ago to negotiate a commercial treaty, I 
alone objected to it, and presented a memorial to our 
Emperor against it. At the best of times it requires 
the nicest diplomacy to induce friendship between 
neighbouring countries, and in this case I alone 
knew how unreliable and vacillating your country 
is, therefore I was most anxious to make myself 
heard. 

. " The world has greatly changed now from what 
it was in ancient times. And it would be impossible 
to attempt to stem the tide and prevent the spread of 
Western influence to-day. Therefore, in order to 
preserve Orientalism it is essential that the three 
countries, Korea, Japan, and China, should be in 



APPENDIX 



333 



accord and work in harmony together, as our lips and 
teeth do. This I most earnestly desire, although I 
feel that your country's representatives are not to be 
relied upon. Still I do not wish to insist upon this so 
strongly as to disturb the harmonious relations hitherto 
existing between the two countries. 

" It is now twenty years since I retired into the 
country from active service, and I have not since then 
taken any open part in criticising your actions, but 
now I feel impelled to come forward, for 1 see only 
too plainly that your country is now acting neither 
faithfully nor uprightly. Moreover, I see that your 
country will surely perish in the end, even though she 
looms strong and large now. Your unrighteous break- 
ing of promises is continually causing mischief in the 
Orient. 

" If you will pardon me I will firstly point out 
where you have done wrong, and how you have 
broken faith and deviated from uprightness. 

" I respectfully submit that in the agreement made 
between General Shin Ken and In Ji-Sho of Chosen 
(Korea) and Kuroda and Inouye, the Ambassadors of 
your country at Kokwa thirty years ago, the first 
article says that Korea is an independent country 
claiming equal rights with Japan, and desiring to be 
treated on an equality, while at the same time wishing 
to maintain friendship. Each is to avoid giving 
offence or trespassing on the rights of the other. In 
order to cement this friendship, and make it ever- 
lasting, all the regulations that hitherto existed as a bar 
to intercourse were abolished. The twelfth article 
expressly decreed that this agreement cannot be altered 
by either of the Governments, but is to be observed 



334 APPENDIX 

faithfully and invariably by both nations in per- 
petuity. 

" Also in the agreement made between Li Hung 
Chang, the Chinese Plenipotentiary, and Marquis Ito, 
the Plenipotentiary of your country, at Bakan, twelve 
years ago, the first article says that both countries 
recognise the independence of Korea and pledge them- 
selves not to invade it. 

" In declaring war against Russia three years ago, 
Japan expressly announced her intention to maintain 
peace in Korea and China. In justifying your position 
against Russia at the outset of the war, your country 
made international statements that the object of 
hostilities was to maintain the independence and the 
territorial integrity of Korea. 

" Has not the Emperor of your country taken an 
oath before the whole world not to invade our 
territory, but to respect the independence and freedom 
of our people ? Do not all the Powers of the world 
expect that two countries like Korea and Japan, being 
each dependent upon the other, like the lips and the 
teeth, should respect one another's rights and not 
attempt any invasion of each other's country ? 

a In spite of all this, your country is now behaving 
immorally and cruelly to ours, day after day. It has 
broken faith with us. The old treaty which pro- 
claimed Korea's independence and equality with Japan 
is no longer true, for we have become slaves. The 
war with Russia, nominally started to preserve Korea's 
independence and territorial rights, has now given you 
the power to invade our country. All our people, in 
number 20,000,000, hate your people and will not 
even sit facing the east. 



APPENDIX 335 

c ' It was also agreed that this treaty was not to 
be altered, but was to be kept for everlasting, in 
order to keep perpetual peace between us. Yet the 
treaty has been altered, and peace has been broken 
between us. Heaven has been cheated, the gods have 
been deceived, and all the Powers of the world have 
been flouted ! 

" I can bear witness that twenty-three years ago 
Takesoe, the Japanese Minister to Korea, raised a 
revolt, possessed himself of our Emperor's person and 
took him away, and killed our Ministers. This was 
the first crime by which you broke faith with us 
and behaved unrighteously. 

iC Thirteen years ago, Otori, the Japanese Minister, 
revolted, invaded our Imperial Palace, and destroyed 
our national institutions, under the pretence of es- 
tablishing the independence of Korea, but in reality 
indicating the future plan of his country to invade 
us and deprive us of our rights. This is the second 
crime by which you broke faith with us. 

"Again, twelve years ago Miura, the Japanese 
Minister, rebelled and killed our Queen. That 
was the greatest rebellion that had ever occurred 
in all the ages. But the identity of the con- 
spirators was so well hidden that they all escaped. 
This is the third crime, one of great tyranny and 
cruelty. 

" Since Hayashi and Hasegawa arrived in Korea, 
the menaces and deprivations of our rights have been 
beyond all measure. The most serious matter is the 
construction of the railways at various places. The 
Seoul-Wi-ju railway was planned and constructed 
without our consent. We have been robbed of the 



336 APPENDIX 

chief sources of national wealth, the profits of fishing 
and ginseng, mining rights, navigation, etc., and 
nothing is left to us. This is the fourth crime by 
which you have broken faith with us. 

" Under the excuse of military necessity you have 
forcibly occupied our land and invaded our homes, 
dug up the graves of our ancestors, and destroyed 
innumerable houses. Professing to advise us and 
advance our good, you have forced us to put into 
office mean and dissolute men, corrupt bribe-takers, 
and the issuers of false accounts. This is the fifth 
crime by which you have broken faith with us. 

" Even though the war is ended you do not give 
us back the railways ; you still occupy the line and 
still maintain martial law. This is the sixth crime 
by which you have broken faith with us. 

" You have induced Yi Chi Yong, a traitor, to enter 
into the Korean-Japanese agreements, destroying our 
national rights and ignoring the independence of Korea 
and the maintenance of her territorial integrity. This 
is the seventh crime by which you have broken faith 
with us. 

" Our officials and scholars offered memorials to our 
Emperor ; immediately afterwards you arrested all the 
memorialists and imprisoned them for a long time. 
The lives of these people have been in jeopardy, but 
you would not release them because you wish to 
suppress any signs of patriotism on the part of the 
people, and you wish to influence public opinion 
in your own favour as against us. This is 
the eighth crime by which you have broken faith 
with us. 

" You have taken dissolute men like the robbers 



APPENDIX 337 

and tonghaks (they take a new name, the Il-chin-hoi), 
and profess to regard them as guides and leaders, and 
have instigated them to produce a manifesto, which 
you immediately propagated, declaring that it showed 
public opinion was on your side. But the associations 
of scholars, the Poanhoi and Yu Yakso, who really 
represent the people and have the welfare of the 
nation at heart, you arrested and imprisoned, declaring 
that they were plotting against the public peace. This 
is the ninth crime by which you have broken faith 
with us. 

" You forcibly collect coolies together and drive 
them like cattle, and if they resent this treatment you 
kill them suddenly and as lightly as a man cuts down 
the grass or the bushes. You will sell our people 
secretly to Mexicans, making it impossible for their 
fathers and brothers and sons to avenge or get 
them back, even if they are likely to die. This 
is the tenth crime by which you have broken faith 
with us. 

" Again, you have forcibly taken possession of the 
Post and Telegraph Offices, securing hold of the lines 
of communication. This is the eleventh crime by 
which you have broken faith with us. 

" You appoint your own advisers to all the State 
departments — men who are getting good salaries 
without working. You are diminishing enlistment in 
the military police. You usurp control of the financial 
affairs, and in consequence will entirely destroy us. 
This is the twelfth crime by which you have broken 
faith with us. 

" Professing to adjust our financial relations, you 
have compelled us to raise loans, only increasing the 

22 



338 APPENDIX 

weight of our trouble. You have made a new coinage, 
but the colour and material and weight are not in any 
way different from the old coinage. Thus you are 
getting the profit for yourselves, at the same time 
increasing the financial burden of our country. You 
forcibly insist on making paper money legal tender. 
It was not current before. It is clear that you wish to 
suck us dry of all we have and then throw us aside as 
empty shells. This is the thirteenth crime by which 
you have broken faith with us. 

<c On the night of November 17, last year, I to and 
Hasegawa entered the Imperial Palace, surrounded it 
with soldiers, and compelled our Government to make 
a new treaty. Our Government at first demurred, 
neither assenting nor declining. In the end you had 
to steal the Emperor's seal and sign the treaty surrep- 
titiously. By this you have taken our diplomatic 
affairs and controlled them from Japan, and control us 
from your Resident-General in Korea. Thus our 
independent rights were lost in one morning. But 
the news was kept secret by threats, and dust was 
thrown in the eyes of all the Powers. This is the 
fourteenth crime by which you have broken faith 
with us. 

" At first you said that you would merely superintend 
our diplomatic affairs, but in the end you entirely 
control the administration of the whole country. 
Large numbers of subordinate officials are appointed 
by the Residency-General, and every one is so frightened 
that the people dare not move or make any sign. This 
is the fifteenth crime by which you have broken faith 
with us. 

" Lately you have endeavoured to force new emigra- 



APPENDIX 339 

tion regulations on us by which you hope to carry out 
your poisonous plan of clearing our people out of the 
country and changing the race. This is the sixteenth 
crime by which you have broken faith with us. And 
this last is surely the greatest crime in the world. Alas ! 
alas ! these are not all, but only the most prominent. 
Your country has entirely broken faith and behaved 
unrighteously. Your promises are borne witness to by 
the agreements made at Kokwa and Bakan, and in the 
statements made to all the Powers at the outbreak of 
the war. How is it that these have not been kept, 
but that your words are full of hesitation, cheating, 
cunning, and falsehood ? Had you dealt fairly by 
us, the hearts of twenty million people would not 
be full of hate for your country. Had you kept 
your word, we would believe that you were main- 
taining and strengthening our country for us. Then 
our people would take an oath to seek and re-establish 
peace. 

Your country has always borne malice against us 
because His Majesty our Emperor, moved to the 
Russian Legation [N.B. — this of course refers to the 
escape of the Emperor in February, 1896, after the 
murder of the Queen by the Japanese] ; but why did 
he go there ? He did not wish to risk being betrayed 
again. Surrounded by traitors, he could do nothing. 
He could not trust your country, but was alarmed and 
frightened day and night, and could not stop in his 
Palace since the wicked murder of the Queen there. 
He had to go to the Russians because of the crime 
of your country. It left nothing but hate in your 
hearts for us. 

" Notwithstanding this, the conditions in the East 



34Q APPENDIX 

were such at the time when war broke out between 
you and Russia that our people were prepared to 
receive your army without fear. But since your army 
has been victorious it has come back and has acted 
wickedly and cruelly to our people. 

" Even had Russia been the conqueror, would our 
country's misfortunes have been greater than they are 
to-day ? 

" All our people now expect that they will be killed. 
They feel as if death had already come to them. But 
may be they will not perish after all, although they 
would rather die than have to surrender and break 
their hearts when threatened by tyrants/' 

After reference to a famous scholar, the memorial 
goes on : 

" The people of our country, a land of three 
thousand li in length, are the descendants of the wise 
king and sages who for four thousand years obeyed 
and learnt politeness and righteousness. Are these 
the people who delight in becoming the slaves of an 
enemy ? Do you think that people such as these 
desire to beg for one day's life ? 

"All the world knows that Russia will not forget 
her defeat and will sooner or later again attack the 
East. Should that happen, I doubt if the lands of 
the East can stand, even if they are all allied, support- 
ing and relying upon one another. How much less 
chance will they have when instead of living in friend- 
ship they are hating each other and are mutually jealous 
as enemies in the same house ! No European Power 
would support your country. They have no mind 
to love others, they would leave you alone. Then 
destruction would follow, not for you alone, but for 



APPENDIX 341 

the whole East. And the crime of causing that 
destruction would have been wrought by you. Even 
though your country is strong, she would perish. 
Surely it is better for you to reform your ways imme- 
diately and again practise original virtue. To keep 
faith, and to cleave unto righteousness, how good it 
is ! I trust that my humble letter will immediately 
reach your Emperor and that you will wholly repent 
the sixteen crimes I have mentioned. I hope that you 
will recall the Resident-General, the advisers and the 
Commanders-in-chief of the army. I hope that you will 
appoint a faithful and loyal man as your Minister. 
Also that you will apologise to all Powers for having 
encroached upon the independence and rights of our 
country. And then, and then only, can you expect your 
nation and ours to be actually and truly at enduring 
peace with each other ; then the happiness and entire 
peace will come to you and the greatness of the East 
will be maintained. 

" If you do not do this, how can your country avoid 
destruction ? How can it stand alone even if in the 
future the calamities I have forecast should be avoided ? 
Your present developments are like those of Minwang 
of Cleh Kingdom, and Yenkoung of Song Kingdom, 
two thousand years ago. Nothing is more sure than 
that blessing follows in the wake of righteousness, while 
calamity haunts the steps of the evildoer. These are 
the ways of Providence. Even if I am wrong about 
the state of affairs, I am full of loyalty to my country, 
and I love my own people, and I keep faith and cleave 
unto righteousness. I have long regretted that I did 
not die when I could have wished to do so. Seeing 
with my own eyes the terrible state of the land and 



342 APPENDIX 

the extremity of the people, I would have wished to 
die at the hour of our disgrace. . . . This is not only 
a suggestion for our country, but also for yours ; and 
again, not only for your country, but for the whole 
of the East." 



INDEX 



Allen, Dr., American Minister to 

Korea, 154-5 
America 

and Chinese trade, 273, 276 
,, the Far Eastern Question, 

318-19 
,, Korea, 45-47, 154-5 
,, Manchurian trade, 276-7, 

319 
,, Pacific shipping, 21-2 
,, Tobacco Co., see British 
American Tobacco Co. 
Anderson, Mr. G., of Amoy, on 
Japanese shipping competition 
in South China, 28-30 
Anglo-Japanese Alliance, 7 
Antung, 77-83, 158-9 
Australasia and the Asiatic emi- 
grant, 167, 174-7 
Professor Ishikawa on, 175 
The Sydney Bulletin on, 176 
Sir Joseph Ward on, 177 
Mr. J. C. Watson on, 176 

Beri-beri in the Japanese Army, 

106-7 
Bishop, Mrs., on the murder of the 

Korean Queen, 35 
Boxer Movement, 184 

in Manchuria, 89, 290-2 

in Peking, 235-7 

Viceroy Yuan and, 202, 216 
British American Tobacco Co., 

135, 138, 158 
British Columbia, see Emigration 



Brown, Sir J. McLeavy 

his control of Korean Customs, 
37,38 

his resignation, 55, 155 
Buddhism, revival of, 308 

California, see Emigration 

Canada, see Emigration 

Chang Chien, a progressive Chinese 

merchant, 278-80 
Chang Chih Tung, Viceroy 
his army, 223, 229 
his reforms, 279 
Chang-Chung-fu, 116 
China 

Anti-foreign movement, 259-69, 

282-3 
army, 185, 200, 21 1-3 1 
Board of War, 213, 225, 227 
Boxer Movement, 89, 184, 202, 

216, 235-7, 241, 290-2 
boycott literature, 139 
commerce, 273-84 
Customs Service, 260-3 
Dowager Empress of, see Tzu-hi 
Education : abolition of classical 
examinations, 183, 187-8 
military schools, 222-3 
possible English assistance, 

320 
students in Japan, 188-9 
Viceroy Yuan's schools, 204 
emigration, see Emigration 
Emperor of, see Kwang-sii 
foot-binding, 251-2 



344 



INDEX 



China (cont.) 

foreign trade 273-84 

home life, 250-6 

Japanese in, 88, 138, 149, 267-9 

journalism, 186-7, 263-6 

navy, 231 

patriotic fund, 262-3 

proposed Parliament, 240 

reaction in, 192, 238-41 

reform movement, 86-89, 181- 

92, 238-41 
revolutionary party, 242 
women of, 185-6, 250-6 

Choi Ik Hyon, open letter of, 332- 
42 

Dalny, see Taken 
Deakin, Mr., and Australian de- 
fence, 176 

Emigration, Asiatic, 165-77 
to Australasia, 167, 175-7 
,, British Columbia, 168-71 
,, California, 165-6 
,, Hawaii, 17 1-3 
,, Korea, see Korea 
,, Manchuria, see Manchuria 
Japanese, 10-13, 165—77 
England 

action over Korean Customs, 

155, 3i9 
Anglo- Japanese Alliance, 7 
Consuls, 319 
Foreign Office and the " Open 

Door," 160-1 
her opportunity, 206, 317-22 
reduction of North Pacific Fleet, 

15, 319 
trade in the Far East, 273-84 
treaty with Korea, 34 

Fukuin Shimpo on foreign mis- 
sionaries, 31 1- 1 2 

Fukushima, General, on the 
Chinese Army, 223 

German trade in China, 274-5 
Greenwood, Mr. F., on Asian 
alliances, 15-16 



Hagiwara, Mr., 48, 50, 88-9, ^SS 
Harada, Mr. Tasuku, on the inde- 
pendence of India, 23 
Harbin, 1 16-17 
Harriman, Mr., and the Pacific 

Mail Line, 21-2 
Hart, Sir Robert, 38, 260-1 
Hasegawa, General, 50, 51, 338 
Hawaii, Japanese or Chinese in, 

I7I-3 
Hayashi, Mr., 39, 45, 48, 50, 88, 335 
Hayashi, Viscount, on the Cali- 

fornian question, 165-6 
Hearn, Lacfadio, 124, 168 
Hill, Mr. J. J., his Pacific steamers, 
21 
his plans for American-Asian 
trade, 276 
Hulbert, Mr. H. B., 46, 47 
Hung-hutzes (bandits), 96-8, 
no, 113-14 

India and Japan, 6-j, 23-5 
Ishikawa, Professor, on Australian 

immigration laws, 175 
Ito, the Marquis 

secures new Korean treaty, 
45-52, 338 

becomes first President-General 
of Korea, 55 

statement to Mr. McKenzie, y^ 

on Korean Customs, 157 

Japan 

army, 13-16 

and the Chinese Army, 229-30 
Chinese trade, 277 
,, Chinese students, 188-9 
,, Korea, 33-98, 174 
child labour, 147-9 
commercial policy, 3, 121-62 
in Korea, 153-8 
see also " Open Door " 
cotton trade, 123, 143-50, 160 
emigration, n, 165-177 
expansion of, 1894 — 1907, two 
maps, 4-5 



INDEX 



345 



Japan (cont.) 

foreign capital in, 126-7 

foreign policy, 3-16 

in Manchuria, 77-115, 150, 173 

increased cost of living, 125 

Japanese anti-foreign literature 
in China, 139-40 

Morals, 93-4, 124, 172-3, 245-8, 
280-2 

national expenditure, 125 

navy, 14-15 

Portsmouth Treaty, 3, 104-9 

population, 10 

poverty in, 10 

shipping and shipbuilding, 19- 
30, 123-4, 230-1 

Shipping Subsidies Bill (1907), 
27 

tobacco monopoly, 1 3 3-40 

wages in, 125, 128 

why Japan made peace, 105-9 

women, 245-8 
Japan Times 

Hindoo student's statement in, 

24-5 
pleads for increased arma- 
ments, 109 
Japan Weekly Mail 

on anti-British agitation, 24 
on Korean policy, 56-7 
on foreign missionaries, 312-13 
Jardine, Matheson & Co., Messrs., 
25, 27, 276 

Kaneko, Baron, on mixed Japan- 
ese marriages, 12-13 
Kang-Yu-Wei, 183-5 
Korea 

appeals to America, 46-7 

army, 41 

Choi Ik Hyon on Japanese me- 
thods in, 332, 42 

currency, 64 

Emperor, 38, 48-53. 55-7, 339 

foreign trade in, 1 5 3-8 

Japanese oppression in, 61, 
65-73, 157, 173-4, 325-42 



Korea {cont.) 

Japanese policy in, 33-98, 153-8, 

174 
mining in, 156-7 
missionary movement in, 292-5 
murder of Queen, 35-6 
Nagamori scheme, 42, 45 
petition to President Roosevelt, 

325-31 

prisons, 72-3 

proposed transference to Japan- 
ese Customs Union, 157-8 

reforms, 38, 41, 62-65, 249 

surrender of independence, 47- 

53 
treaties with Japan, 34, 40, 48, 

57 

Viceroy Yuan in, 199-200 

women of, 248-50 
Korea Review quoted, 53-4 
Kwang-sii, Emperor of China, 182, 

201, 238 

Laurier, Sir W., on Canadian- 
Japanese relations, 168 
Lee, Rev. Graham, 293 
Liang, Mr. M. T., 87 

Maine, Sir Henry, on Asian 

alliances, 15-16 
Manchuria 

differential railway rates, 161 

foreign trade in, 158 

Hung-hutzes, 95-8 

Japanese in, 3-6, 77-115, 150, 
173-4, 268-9 

Japanese cotton goods in, 149- 
50 

Japanese oppression, 79, 93-5, 
173-4 

railways, 77, 83, 86, 104 
Marconi system in China, 197, 238 
Min Yong Whan, suicide of, 53-4 
Missions in the Far East, 287-314 

in Japan, 307-14 

in Korea, 292-5 

in Moukden, 89-90, 290-2 

23 



346 



INDEX 



Missions in Peking, 238 
in South China, 313-14 
Catholic and Protestant me- 
thods, 295-7 
native control of, 309-14 
Tuan-fang, Viceroy of Hunan, 

on, 287 
Viceroy Yuan on, 302 

Moffett, Dr. S., 293 

Moukden, 85-90, 189 

Newchwang, 6, 158, 161, 269 
New Zealand and Asiatics, 177 
North China Daily News on 
Japanese ambitions, 7 

Okuma, Count, on Japanese 
speculation, 127 
on Christian missions in Japan, 
308 
" Open Door," 6, 153-62 

in Manchuria, 79-81 
Opium in Korea, 72 
in China, 320-1 

Paotingfu, 197, 217-23 
Peking, 190-1, 197, 235-42 
Ping- Yang, Korea, 33, 53 

prison, 72-7, 

missionaries at, 293 
" Plea for Patriotism, A," 187 
Port Arthur, 101-3 
Pustau, Captain von, 113 

Railways : 

Antung-Moukden, 77, 78, 83, 84 

in China, 190, 242, 282-3 

in Korea, 63, 64, 335 

railway map of China, 

South Manchurian, 86, 104, no, 
161 

trans-Siberian, 34, 116, 190-1 
Review of Reviews (Australasian), 

quoted, 175 
Roosevelt, President 

and Korea, 47 

and Dr. Allen, 154-5 



Roosevelt, President (cont.) 
petition to, from Korean 
Foreign Office, 325-31 

Russia 

and China, 196, 198 

bribery among officials, 118 

Chinese distrust of, 318 

foreign policy in the Far East, 6 

in Korea, 34-9 

in Manchuria, 89, 101-118 

position at close of war, 107-9 

Russo-Japanese War : 
effect on China, 184 
why peace was made, 105-9 

Shanghai, 273 

Shipping and ship-building 

Japanese plans, 19-30, 123-4 
at Shanghai, 273 

on the Yangtsze, 25-28, 279 
Sun-chon, Korea, 

torture in, 72-3 

missions at, 293-5 
Sydney Bulletin quoted, 176 

Tairen, 6, 103, 160-1 
Tang-Shao-Yi, 259-62 
Tieh Liang, 259, 262 
Tientsin, 197-99, 203-5 

model prison in, 204-5 

Viceroy Yuan's palace in, 
195-7 
Torture in China, 204 

in Korea, 72-3 

in Manchuria, 94-5 
Treaties and protocols 

how the 1905 Korean- Japanese 
treaty was secured, 45-54 

Korean- American treaty, 46-7 

Korean-Japanese treaties, 34, 
40, 48, 57 

text of protocol between Korea 
and Japan, Feb. 1904, 57-8 

Treaty of Portsmouth, 3, 104-9 
Turley, Mr., of Moukden, 85, 

290 



INDEX 



347 



Tzu-hi, Dowager Empress of China, 
history and character, 183-5 
overthrows the Emperor, 201-2 
goodwill to Viceroy Yuan, 206, 

239 
in the Forbidden City, 238 



Ward, Sir J., on the " Yellow 

Peril," 177 
Watson, Mr. J. C, on Australia 

and the Asian races, 1 76 
Wei-hai-wei, 321 
Westwater, Dr., 247 
Wiju and Sin-Wiju, 77, 156 
Wright, Mr. C. D., on the Japanese 

and Chinese in Hawaii, 172-3 



Yalu River and timber rights, 80-1 
Yangtsze trade, 26-8, 278-9 
♦'Yellow Peril, The," 191 
Sir J. Ward on, 177 
Mr. F. Greenwood and Sir 

Henry Maine on, 15-16 
in Australasia, 167, 174-7 
and Chinese Army, 223-4 
Yuan Shih-kai, Viceroy of Chih-li 
story of his life, 195-207 
in Korea, 199-200 
lectures on constitutionalism, 

189 
and the new Chinese army, 

202-3, 212-17, 225-30 
his relations with the Dowager 
Empress, 206, 239 



Printed by Hazell, Watson & Viney, Ld., London and Aylesbury. 






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